The Politics of Desire (The Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature Ser.)

Janan, Micela Wakil

ISBN 10: 0520223217 / ISBN 13: 9780520223219

Editore: Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.: University of California Press, 2000, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A., 2000

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ISBN:0-520-22321-7. Softcover, Near Fine. Codice articolo 001627

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: The Politics of Desire (The Joan Palevsky ...

Casa editrice: Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.: University of California Press, 2000, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Data di pubblicazione: 2000

Legatura: Soft Cover

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto:

Propertius (ca. 54 b.c.--ca. 2 b.c.) was a Roman poet who composed four compelling books of elegies in the chaotic years surrounding Rome's transition from republic to empire. The first three of these books revolve mostly around a tormented love affair with a woman called Cynthia. The fourth book of poetry rests on more diverse subject matter and is notoriously the most opaque and elusive. In The Politics of Desire, Micaela Janan radically reassesses Propertius' last elegies, using contemporary psychoanalytic theory to illuminate these challenging texts.

Janan finds that the upheaval of Rome's transformation to empire corresponds to the intellectually unsettled conditions of our own time, so that contemporary methodologies offer an uncannily suitable approach for understanding Propertius. In particular, she uses the work of Jacques Lacan, since it provides the best conceptual tools for examining the relation between political crisis and the struggles of the self, a theme that resonates in these difficult elegies.

This book expands our understanding of an important Roman poet, and its innovative and sophisticated methodological approach makes a substantial contribution to feminist and psychoanalytic criticism. In addition, Janan addresses elegy's relationship to larger cultural questions, and broadens our understanding of the social crisis affecting Rome during the early empire.

Informazioni sull?autore:

Micaela Janan is Associate Professor of Classics at Duke University. She is the author of When the Lamp Is Shattered: Desire and Narrative in Catullus (1994).