Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I
- 2 Lucian and the Culture of Criticism
- 3 Lucian’s Poetics
- 4 Lucian and Philosophy
- 5 On Believing in Lucian: The Religious Polemics
- 6 Lucian and Art History
- 7 Some Queer Entanglements in Lucian’s Erotes
- Part II
- Part III
- References
- Index Locorum
- Subject Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
7 - Some Queer Entanglements in Lucian’s Erotes
from Part I
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I
- 2 Lucian and the Culture of Criticism
- 3 Lucian’s Poetics
- 4 Lucian and Philosophy
- 5 On Believing in Lucian: The Religious Polemics
- 6 Lucian and Art History
- 7 Some Queer Entanglements in Lucian’s Erotes
- Part II
- Part III
- References
- Index Locorum
- Subject Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Summary
This chapter examines Lucian’s Erotes to explore qustions of authorship and agency. It explores how questions about authorship operate differently for erotic and non-erotic works and the ways in which erotic discourse is more amenable to anonymous or masked authors. The chapter shows how according Lucianic authorship to this text enriches our understanding of other texts by Lucian. It examines how the Erotes functions to critique normative sexual discourse and suggest that in the comparison between men and women as love objects the text underlines the tiredness and conventionality of this debate and the rhetorical tropes that are employed in it. By contrast, this reading of the Erotes seeks to locate the critical frisson of the text (its ‘kink’) in its discussion of the magnitude of male appetite and the way the text correlates sex and the divine.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Lucian , pp. 138 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024