MAKING LOVE, MAKING REALITY: PROPERTIUS, PROSOPOPOEIA, AND POETRY’S POWER OF CREATION By RANDALL LAWRENCE CHILDREE A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2007 1 © 2007 Randall Lawrence Childree 2 For Lawrence Childree e pluribus unum 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My greatest thanks are owed to my chairman, Timothy Johnson. He was patient with a student whose writing patterns and work habits were, no doubt infuriatingly, very different from his own. All the same he provided encouragement when it was needed, motivation when it was, and new perspectives when they were. His advice on life matters counted no less. I am an improved scholar and person because of his efforts. Robert Wagman, Jennifer Rea, Karelisa Hartigan, and Gareth Schmeling have all contributed to my improvement, sometimes in ways that they probably do not realize. I also have to mention Druscilla Gurahoo, who always had a chair for me, a good story and a smile, and who also provided more than a few relaxing moments when I was exhausted. My friends and fellow students in the department have all meant a great deal to me, but particularly three. I will always owe Dustin Heinen a debt of gratitude: when I was trapped in San Giacomo, he was my only outlet to civilization and the only thing that kept me sane. Jon Zarecki has paradoxically both shown me how much fun it can be to act utterly ridiculous, and modeled what it means to succeed in our profession. Todd Bohlander has been with me for years, sharing random conversations, challenging me to think harder about God, and always willing to give me advice. If I am a reader of elegy, Todd has seen me through a few Cynthias, and I could only have done better by hewing closer to his advice. Then there is the support of my family: my father for checking up on me every day, my mother for restraining herself from doing the same. I would not have been able to come this far without them always believing in me. And I can never express my 4 gratitude enough to my grandmother, Evelyn Childree, and my grandfather, Lawrence Childree, to whom I dedicate this. They gave me the peace that only comes from knowing, without ever the slightest doubt, that someone loves you unconditionally and without end. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. 4 ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 9 2 REMOVING MASKS: FROM PERSONA TO PROSOPOPOEIA .........................12 Remembering the ‘New’ Persona .............................................................................13 Controversial Personae ............................................................................................16 Looking Behind the Mask: The Ancient Evidence ...................................................18 A New Framework: Prosopopoeia............................................................................33 3 FROM REALISTIC ELEGY TO ELEGIAC REALITY .........................................39 Defining Realism ......................................................................................................39 Propertius and the ‘Nude’ Style...............................................................................42 Making the Audience Read ‘Real’............................................................................51 Looking at Propertius, Looking at Gallus ................................................................74 The ‘Real’ Perusine War..........................................................................................81 4 A REAL MYTHOLOGICAL PROPERTIUS ..........................................................92 The Problem with Propertian Myth ........................................................................92 The Knowledge of Myth among the Romans .........................................................100 Propertius as a ‘Real’ Myth ...................................................................................104 Face-to-face with Myth..........................................................................................112 The Failure of Myth ..............................................................................................114 The Propertian Myth.............................................................................................128 5 WRITING ELEGIAC REALITY ..........................................................................136 Book Four: The End of Elegy? ..............................................................................136 Horos and the Drama of 4.1...................................................................................139 Catullus 16 and the Cynthia Poems: Contested Reality ........................................145 Writing Together ...................................................................................................151 6 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................157 LIST OF REFERENCES.............................................................................................159 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ........................................................................................168 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy MAKING LOVE, MAKING REALITY: PROPERTIUS, PROSOPOPOEIA, AND POETRY’S POWER OF CREATION By Randall Lawrence Childree August 2007 Chair: Timothy Johnson Major: Classical Studies In this study I argue that the elegies of Sextus Propertius are best understood through the model of prosopopoeia. According to this model, Propertius’ poems are grounded in reality for authenticity and authority’s sake; his poems seek to be imitable and have an effect in society; and the main feature of his poetry is an insistence on the ability of poetry to rewrite and shape that reality. First, the dominant theory in reading elegy, the persona, is examined in light of ancient evidence for audience reactions to biographical or pseudo-biographical forms of writing. Then, in book 1, Propertius uses the techniques of realism to create a credible world, one which transforms his poet-friends (including his predecessor Cornelius Gallus) into mirrors of his own ‘realistic’ style. Propertius continues in books 2 and 3 negotiating the exemplarity granted to myth and reality by becoming a mythical character, an exemplum, himself. With the programmatic 4.1, Propertius predicts modern interpretations of book 4: abandoning the first person voice does not, he argues, necessarily entail a diminution of power. Only by giving Propertius’ elegiac world the legitimacy of reality does book 4 come into focus as poems 4.7 and 4.8 (the Cynthia 7 poems) and 4.3 (Arethusa’s letter to her campaigning husband Lycotas), seen through the filter of Catullus 16, negotiate, even fight, over who, in the end, controls representation. 8 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION In this study I argue that Sextus Propertius is best understood through the rhetorical strategy of prosopopoeia. According to this model, Propertius’ poems are grounded in reality for authenticity and authority’s sake; his poems seek to be imitable and have an effect in society; and the main feature of his poetry is an insistence on the ability of poetry to rewrite and shape that reality. Prosopopoeia is at odds with two main trends in Propertian scholarship. As a result of the first trend—the thorough application of a simplistic persona model to the reading of his poems—Propertius is stuck inside his poems, doomed to interact only with other literature, fictional creations, and generic types. He is limited in his ability to interact with the world around him, a world in flux due to the rise of Augustus and the massive revaluation of Rome’s values and ideals that accompanied his rise to power. But ‘no one puts Propertius in a corner’; and as chapter one shows, the theory of persona is inconsistent with the expectations of both ancient readers and writers. Propertius’ realistic self-presentation instead prompts a biographical reading from his audience. Propertius ensures that his audience will employ a biographical approach through the systematic application of realistic techniques in writing book 1 (this is the argument of chapter 2). These techniques include rejecting artifice (1.2) and setting up the metaphor of voyeurism as a guide for his readers (1.10). At the book’s most starkly historical moment (1.21 and 1.22 on the consequences of the Perusine war), Propertius seizes the power of his realistic poetry and rewrites the painful story of his own youth. 9 Propertius’ realistic technique is tested by the omnipresence of myth in Roman poetry and the prior claim that myth had on exemplarity (chapter 3). Propertius attacks myth on the very grounds of its exemplarity and displays the flaws inherent in using mythological exempla—these exempla simply do not correspond to real experience (2.8, 2.12). Instead, Propertius turns his own story into an exemplum and writes himself into the story of the defeat of Cleopatra as an exemplum for Augustus. The second troublesome trend is due in large part