Eros at Dusk

This book analyzes the relationship between wedding poetry and love poetry in the ancient world. By treating both Greek and Latin texts, it offers an innovative and wide-ranging discussion of the poetic representation of social occasions. The discourses associated with weddings and love affairs both foreground ideas of persuasion and praise even though they differ dramatically in their participants and their outcomes. Furthermore, these texts make it clear that the brief, idealized, and eroticized moment of the wedding stands in contrast to the long-lasting and harmonious agreement of the marriage. At times, these genres share traditional forms of erotic persuasion, but at other points, one genre purposefully alludes to the other to make a bride seem like a girlfriend or a girlfriend like a bride. Explicit divergences remind the audience of the different trajectories of the wedding, which will hopefully transition into a stable marriage, and the love affair, which is unlikely to endure with mutual affection. Important themes include the threshold; the evening star; plant and animal metaphors; heroic comparisons; reciprocity and the blessings of the gods; and sexual violence and persuasion. The consistency and durability of this intergeneric relationship demonstrates deep-seated conceptions of legitimate and illegitimate sexual relationships

Aesthetics · Affection · Art · Courtship · Flattery · Literature · Persuasion · Poetry · Praise · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Gender Studies · History · Psychology · Social Psychology · Epithalamia · Epithalamia, history and criticism · Greek Love poetry · Greek poetry · Greek poetry, history and criticism · History and criticism · Latin Love poetry · Latin poetry · Latin poetry, history and criticism

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