Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2012
Questions of how ancient books were produced, how they were valued and what they represented in particular contexts, and how they interacted with the texts inscribed on them have been increasingly to the fore in recent years. This article will focus on the last of these questions, firstly examining the local role of material inscription in a single poem of Propertius, and then moving on to consider issues pertaining to the structure of the collection and how approaches to the poetry book are conditioned by and interact with its materiality. Central to this analysis is a conception of the book not as a neutral purveyor of meanings which exist outside it, but as a part of the processes by which meaning is created and maintained.