Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood

This book applies comparative cultural and literary models to a reading of Catullus'' poems as social performances of a ''poetics of manhood'': a competitively, often outrageously, self-allusive bid for recognition and admiration. Earlier readings of Catullus, based on Romantic and Modernist notions of ''lyric'' poetry, have tended to focus on the relationship with Lesbia and to ignore the majorit...