Publisher Description

How did Latin erotic elegy influence and shape sixteenth-century English love poetry? Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book offers detailed readings of poetry with close attention to the erotic, sometimes problematically 'pornographic', 'wanton' and 'lascivious' verse that exists in both periods. Moving beyond arguments that relate Renaissance eroticism more or less solely back to Ovid and Petrarch, Linda Grant breaks new ground by demonstrating the extent to which a broader sense of classical, specifically Latin, erotics underpins conceptions of sexual love, gender and desire in Renaissance literature. Methodologically sophisticated and moving away from static source study to the dynamism of intertextuality and reception, Grant shows the value of dialogic readings, exploring how elegy speaks to Renaissance poetry and how reading poems from both periods together illuminates both sets of verse.

Author Biography

Linda Grant has been a Teaching Fellow and Visiting Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has also previously taught at Birkbeck College, University of London in both the English and Classics departments, and at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research focuses on Renaissance discourses of love and the erotic.

Table of Contents

Introduction: 'All that rout of lascivious poets that wrote epistles and ditties of love'; 1. 'Ovid was there and with him were Catullus, Propertius and Tibullus': transmission, teaching and receptions of Roman love elegy in the Renaissance; 2. 'For truth and faith in her is laid apart': women's words and the construction of masculinity in Catullus' Lesbia poems and Thomas Wyatt; 3. ''Fool', said my muse to me': reading metapoetics in Propertius 2.1 and 4.7, and Astrophil and Stella 1; 4. 'In six numbers let my work rise, and subside in five': authority and impotence in Amores 1.5 and 3.7, Donne's 'To his mistress going to bed', and Nashe's Choice of Valentines; 5. 'My heart … with love did inly burn': female authorship and desire in Sulpicia, Mary Sidney's Antonie and Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 1.

Review

'… the most enjoyable thing about this volume is the author's delight in the poetry she presents to the reader, which is described within the space of a couple of pages as 'exuberant', 'un-anxious', 'creative' and 'confident, even blasé', with an 'untroubled "pick-and-mix" approach' to reception that is 'programmatically promiscuous'. For G.,[Linda Grant] Renaissance classical reception is a playful and imaginative adventure-and her enthusiasm carries the reader along.' Cora Beth Knowles, Classics for All

Promotional

Interdisciplinary in approach and methodologically sophisticated, this book explores the dynamic reception of Latin erotic elegy in Renaissance love poetry.

Review Quote

'... the most enjoyable thing about this volume is the author's delight in the poetry she presents to the reader, which is described within the space of a couple of pages as 'exuberant', 'un-anxious', 'creative' and 'confident, even blas

Promotional "Headline"

Interdisciplinary in approach and methodologically sophisticated, this book explores the dynamic reception of Latin erotic elegy in Renaissance love poetry.

Description for Bookstore

A dedicated study of how classical Latin erotic elegy was read in the Renaissance and helped shape the emergence of English love poetry. This book will be of interest to scholars of early modern literature and classical literature, in particular love, gender, sex and the body.

Description for Library

A dedicated study of how classical Latin erotic elegy was read in the Renaissance and helped shape the emergence of English love poetry. This book will be of interest to scholars of early modern literature and classical literature, in particular love, gender, sex and the body.

Details