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Chapter 4 - Naughty Girls

Comic Figures and Gendered Control in Catullus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2021

Christopher B. Polt
Affiliation:
Boston College, Massachusetts
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Summary

With a few exceptions, Catullus is interested in “bad” women who break the mold, and the more forcefully they do, the more fascinating they are to him. For him, the feminine ideal seems to have been not the bona mulier but the pessima puella, the “naughty girl.” Something similar can be said of Roman comedy, whose malae meretrices are often the stars of the show, and to whom Catullus alludes throughout his poetic corpus. This chapter explores poems in which women are explicitly marked as “bad” and argues that, in each case, Catullus uses their malitia as a way to consider and display tensions that arise when men and women compete for control. These women take on characteristics of comedy’s meretrices callidae, or “clever sex laborers,” while he aligns himself with familiar antagonistic stock types such as the “harsh father” or “braggart soldier,” figures through whom traditional aristocratic values and male concerns are caricatured.

Type
Chapter
Information
Catullus and Roman Comedy
Theatricality and Personal Drama in the Late Republic
, pp. 148 - 173
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Naughty Girls
  • Christopher B. Polt, Boston College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Catullus and Roman Comedy
  • Online publication: 14 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885195.005
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  • Naughty Girls
  • Christopher B. Polt, Boston College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Catullus and Roman Comedy
  • Online publication: 14 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885195.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Naughty Girls
  • Christopher B. Polt, Boston College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Catullus and Roman Comedy
  • Online publication: 14 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885195.005
Available formats
×