Latin Love Elegy

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course introduces students to the genre of Latin Love Elegy through close reading of the poetry of Propertius and Ovid. We will be concerned mainly with the practice of translation, analysis of poetic meter and style, and literary interpretation. However, our work will also involve examination of the socio-political conditions in Rome in the late 1st c. BC that provided an essential context for the development of the genre. Related to this, we will be paying close attention to the ways in which Roman elegy constructs gender and how it defines itself in relation to other genres, especially epic. In addition to daily translation assignments, students will recite selected poems to the class, take two semester exams and a final exam and write an essay of 5-6 pages.