[Introduction to] In the Flesh: Embodied Identities in Roman Elegy

Authors

Erika Zimmerman Damer, University of RichmondFollow

Files

Description

In the Flesh deeply engages postmodern and new materialist feminist thought in close readings of three significant poets—Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid—writing in the early years of Rome's Augustan Principate. In their poems, they represent the flesh-and-blood body in both its integrity and vulnerability, as an index of social position along intersecting axes of sex, gender, status, and class. Erika Zimmermann Damer underscores the fluid, dynamic, and contingent nature of identities in Roman elegy, in response to a period of rapid legal, political, and social change.

Recognizing this power of material flesh to shape elegiac poetry, she asserts, grants figures at the margins of this poetic discourse—mistresses, rivals, enslaved characters, overlooked members of households—their own identities, even when they do not speak. She demonstrates how the three poets create a prominent aesthetic of corporeal abjection and imperfection, associating the body as much with blood, wounds, and corporeal disintegration as with elegance, refinement, and sensuality.

ISBN

9780299318703

Publication Date

2019

Publisher

The University of Wisconsin Press

City

Madison

Keywords

elegiac poetry, Latin, love poetry, history, human body, literature

School

School of Arts and Sciences

Department

Classical Studies

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Classics | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Comments

Read the introduction to the book by clicking the Download button above.

Recommended Citation

Damer, Erika Zimmermann. In the Flesh: Embodied Identities in Roman Elegy. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2019.