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Introduction - On Roman Tenderness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2020

Hérica Valladares
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Summary

The introduction examines the pre-history of the elegiac ideal of a life of love. Although Latin love elegy and tender depictions of lovers in Roman wall painting may be described as Augustan phenomena, their roots lay in the ethical and aesthetic transformations that marked the Republican era. From the construction of luxury villas along the Italian coast to the emergence of a more personal style of poetry, we see in this period a new valuation of private life and a growing concern with individual experience among Rome’s aristocracy. Catullus’ poems to Lesbia represent the apogee of this turn toward the intimate and the private. In his verses we see for the first time the fusion of domus (home) and amor (erotic passion) – concepts long seen as mutually exclusive. Catullus’ domestication of erotic passion thus prefigures the elegists’ rejection of Augustan morality and their own construction of an alternative worldview. The poets’ witty appropriation of familial and marital terms also points to the codification of amatory experience in Roman literature and, later, in art. In both images and texts, erotic tenderness manifests itself through a series of metonymies that render love an experience that can be recognized, learned, remembered, and recounted.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • On Roman Tenderness
  • Hérica Valladares, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Painting, Poetry, and the Invention of Tenderness in the Early Roman Empire
  • Online publication: 26 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108883917.001
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  • On Roman Tenderness
  • Hérica Valladares, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Painting, Poetry, and the Invention of Tenderness in the Early Roman Empire
  • Online publication: 26 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108883917.001
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.

  • On Roman Tenderness
  • Hérica Valladares, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Painting, Poetry, and the Invention of Tenderness in the Early Roman Empire
  • Online publication: 26 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108883917.001
Available formats
×