The Erotics of Domination

Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love Poetry

Bibliographic Data

ID4889891
AuthorsBeert Verstraete, Beert C Verstraete, Ellen Greene (0000-0001-7661-0620)
Year2000
Volume54
Issue1/2
Pages177
Publication date2000-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhoenix (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1089110
OpenAlexW2059978428
LanguageEN
Citations received29

A groundbreaking examination of power relations in Roman elegyIn recent decades, scholars in the field of classics have paid increasing attention to gender and sexual politics in Latin elegiac poetry. In The Erotics of Domination, Ellen Greene re-examines long-held scholarly attitudes concerning the representation of male sexual desire and female subjection in the Latin love poetry of Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid. Analyzing first-person poetic personae that critics have often romanticized, Greene finds that whereas the Catullan lover appears to struggle against his own -feminization, - the Roman elegiac poets--particularly Propertius and Ovid--proclaim a radically unconventional philosophy in their seemingly deliberate inversion of conventional sex roles. Through the servitude of the male lover to his mistress, the woman achieves, at least nominally, complete domination and control over him

Art · Elegiac · Feminization (sociology · Latin Americans · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Renaissance Literature and Culture