The Cambridge Companion to Catullus

Description

Catullus is one of the most popular poets to survive from classical antiquity. Above all others he seems to speak to modern readers with a modern voice. The distinguished contributors to this Companion discuss the principal subjects which drew Catullus' affection and disgust, above all his famous affair with the woman he calls 'Lesbia', and situate him in the social, historical and intellectual context of first-century BC Rome. One of the so-called 'new poets', Catullus had a profound effect on subsequent Latin poetry, and this is explored especially for the Augustan age and the late first century AD. A significant part of the volume is concerned with Catullus' survival into the modern world. There are discussions both of the manuscript tradition and of the interpretative scholarship which has been devoted to his poetry, as well as his reception by renaissance and later poets. Students in particular will appreciate this book.

Ian Du Quesnay was formerly Bursar of Newnham College and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge and University Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge. He has published extensively on Latin poetry and coedited, with Tony Woodman, Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers (Cambridge, 2012). Tony Woodman is Basil L. Gildersleeve Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Virginia and Emeritus Professor of Latin at Durham University, and is currently a Visiting Professor at Newcastle University. He has published twenty-five books and numerous articles on many aspects of Latin poetry and prose, especially Horace and Latin historiography, and coedited, with Ian Du Quesnay, Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers (Cambridge, 2012). He also edited The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus (2010).

'... advanced students, teachers, and researchers looking to orient themselves in the scholarship on Catullus will benefit ... Recommended.' M. L. Goldman, Choice Magazine