Invective Drag: Talking Dirty in Catullus, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid Casey Catherine Moore University of South Carolina - Columbia
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University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 12-14-2015 Invective Drag: Talking Dirty in Catullus, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid Casey Catherine Moore University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Moore, C. C.(2015). Invective Drag: Talking Dirty in Catullus, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3265 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INVECTIVE DRAG: TALKING DIRTY IN CATULLUS, CICERO, HORACE, AND OVID by Casey Catherine Moore Bachelor of Arts University of South Florida, 2007 Master of Arts University of South Carolina, 2010 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2015 Accepted by: Paul Allen Miller, Major Professor Hunter H. Gardner, Committee Member Mark A. Beck, Committee Member David Lee Miller, Committee Member Ed Gieskes, Committee Member Lacy Ford, Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Casey Catherine Moore, 2015 All Rights Reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been very fortunate to have had a phenomenal support system throughout the dissertation process. I am incredibly thankful for my advisor, Paul Allen Miller, whose guidance, comprehensive feedback, and high expectations made for a dissertation I am proud of. Through taking Allen’s courses, working with him at TAPA, and his guidance throughout the comprehensive exam, prospectus, and dissertation, I have remained inspired by him and grateful for so excellent a mentor. Allen and committee member Hunter Gardner read my dissertation chapter by chapter, and their detailed feedback was always thoughtful and timely. Hunter in particular did a great job pushing me to keep going and reminding me I have a voice in the academic conversation. In addition to Allen and Hunter, my committee members Mark Beck, David Miller, and Ed Gieskes, have worked hard to push me to do my best work. Their feedback on my comprehensive exams helped me narrow down my interests in order to work on something that I found provocative and interesting. Our discussion at my prospectus defense really helped me focus my trajectory and formulate a strong argument. David Miller’s detailed feedback on my introductory chapter helped me to clarify my argument early on, and I am very grateful for his hard questions and thought- provoking comments. My former chair at USF, Stephan Schindler, provided great feedback at conference presentations and his support while I worked at USF was much appreciated. iii I could not have completed this project without my best friend and editor, Kim Wickham. Kim read every word of this dissertation, multiple times (in addition to everything I wrote in graduate school), and is probably by this point an honorary Classicist. It was invaluable to have the prospective of someone outside of the field to help me make my arguments clear and accessible to a wider audience. Kim’s kindness and patience with me throughout this process has helped keep my spirits up. I am so thankful for her love and support, and I can’t wait to pay her back as she begins her own dissertation journey. Jennifer Slobodian also read chunks of this work and related conference presentations, and commiserating with her as we went through graduate school together has been one of the things that has seen me through. Amanda Phillips, my friend of nearly twenty years, provided long-distance support and I will always be thankful for her friendship. Cassie Premo Steele, my co-creating writing coach, has been an integral part of this whole process. I am lucky to have family and friends who have listened to me talk about my work for the last several years. One of the best things about my husband, Scott West, is that he remains my biggest fan and has always been truly interested in what I do. His questions about my work, and him pushing me to sit down and write on days when inspiration was lacking has been immensely helpful. He always makes the bad days better and good days the best. My family has continued to be supportive of my pursuit of “dead languages,” and I am so grateful that they have kept believing in me, semester by semester. iv Finally, I have to thank the late Ava Chitwood, without whose mentorship I never would have started this process. She ignited in me a passion for the ancient world when I first started my undergraduate program, and her belief in me is what inspired me to continue on in this profession. Working with her at USF when I finished my graduate course work was such a joy, and I will be forever thankful for every moment I was able to spend with her v ABSTRACT Invective Drag: Talking Dirty in Catullus, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid, studies the relationship between invective texts and masculine self-fashioning. Using gender theory, rhetorical theory, and philology, I examine how invective speech in these authors operates outside the normative social parameters of Roman masculinity.. I examine the invectives of Catullus, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid to argue that in the speaker’s aggressive articulation of masculinity, he often ends up effeminizing or queering himself as he attempts to make his opponents radically other. I show that the hypermasculine speaker of the invective genre utilizes a strategy I term “invective drag,” the adoption of non- normative modalities of self-presentation and expression with regard to social status, gender, and sexuality This work examines the ways in which the invective genre gives the authors of this study a platform to perform masculinity in ways often contradictory to the gender norms operative in their respective cultures. This research contributes to ongoing debates surrounding the function of invective in Roman society. For the last few decades, Roman invective has largely been studied in terms of how it affects social mores and politics, and only recently has been linked to the invective speaker’s self-presentation. Of those studies, mine is the first to trace a rhetorical invective strategy through multiple authors to discuss invective performance’s role in masculine subjectivity. Through this new framework, other works can be re vi examined to reveal a more critical engagement with persona construction in invective and force a reexamination of gender performance in the ancient world. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iii ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION: MASCULINITY, INVECTIVE, AND INVECTIVE DRAG ..............1 CHAPTER TWO: CATULLUS: MASCULINITY IN FLUX ............................................................31 CHAPTER THREE: CICERO: ABJECTION, THE ACTOR, AND POLITICAL INVECTIVE ...............75 CHAPTER FOUR: HORACE: MEDIATING ANXIETY AND ALTERNATIVE MASCULINITY .......119 CHAPTER FIVE: OVID: THE SCREAM OF THE EXILED LOVER .............................................155 WORKS CITED ...................................................................................................................215 viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION: MASCULINITY, INVECTIVE, AND INVECTIVE DRAG The purpose of this project is to examine invective texts as instances of self- fashioning that go beyond the limitations of persona theory. My thesis in this dissertation is that the hypermasculine speaker of the invective genre occupies a queer space through his employment of invective drag, which I define as the adoption of non normative modalities of self-presentation and expression with regard to social status, gender, and sexuality. I will examine the invectives of Catullus, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid to argue that in the speaker’s aggressive articulation of masculinity, he often ends up effeminizing or queering himself as he attempts to make his opponents radically other. In order to examine how invective drag operates, we must first understand the intersection of gender performance and masculine self-fashioning, the limits of persona theory, and the relationship between abjection and invective drag, all of which will be taken up in this section. By looking at the genre of invective, which will be defined as verses that convey threats, anger, and assert dominance over others,1 this work will examine the ways in which the invective genre gives the authors of this study a platform to perform masculinity in ways often contradictory to the gender norms operative in their respective cultures. 1 The OED defines invective as “a violent attack in words; a denunciatory or railing speech, writing, or expression” or “denunciatory or opprobrious language; vehement denunciation; vituperation” (Oxford English Dictionary A.1 and A.2). The OLD defines invective as a forms of literature that “sets out publicly to denigrate a named individual” that follows “well-articulated rhetorical guidelines.” 1 Much work on invective is characterized by a pervasive dichotomy between invective as “therapeutic release” and invective as a formal exercise. With the theory of invective drag I will seek