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The Goat, the Gout, and the Girl: Catullus 69, 71, And 77

The Goat, the Gout, and the Girl: Catullus 69, 71, And 77 THE GOAT, THE GOUT, AND THE GIRL: CATULLUS 69, 71, AND 77 by CHRISTOPHER NAPPA Recent years have seen a growing consensus that Catullus’ vitupera- tions against his enemies, far from being merely sincere attempts at voicing his emotions or letting o V steam, are in fact representative of an inherently vituperative genre of verse, which the Greeks had named for its characteristic metrical form—iambos, a word Catullus himself adopts for many of his own poems. 1 ) Invective poetry has as its primary aim the exclusion of certain individuals, actions, groups, or qualities, and therefore it seeks to deŽ ne the community to which the speaker belongs. To write invective against the greedy, then, is to deŽ ne oneself and one’s community as not greedy; to attack the extravagant is to make a claim for austerity; to despise inelegance is to establish oneself as elegant. Here I shall examine three related poems of Catullus (cc. 69, 71, and 77) as examples of the poet’s invective technique. My aims are three: (1) to show through concrete examples how Catullan invective works, (2) to pro- vide a reading of these often neglected texts as iambos and not as evidence http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Mnemosyne Brill

The Goat, the Gout, and the Girl: Catullus 69, 71, And 77

Nappa, Christopher
Mnemosyne , Volume 52 (3): 266 – Jan 1, 1999
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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1999 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0026-7074
eISSN
1568-525X
DOI
10.1163/156852599774228325
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

THE GOAT, THE GOUT, AND THE GIRL: CATULLUS 69, 71, AND 77 by CHRISTOPHER NAPPA Recent years have seen a growing consensus that Catullus’ vitupera- tions against his enemies, far from being merely sincere attempts at voicing his emotions or letting o V steam, are in fact representative of an inherently vituperative genre of verse, which the Greeks had named for its characteristic metrical form—iambos, a word Catullus himself adopts for many of his own poems. 1 ) Invective poetry has as its primary aim the exclusion of certain individuals, actions, groups, or qualities, and therefore it seeks to deŽ ne the community to which the speaker belongs. To write invective against the greedy, then, is to deŽ ne oneself and one’s community as not greedy; to attack the extravagant is to make a claim for austerity; to despise inelegance is to establish oneself as elegant. Here I shall examine three related poems of Catullus (cc. 69, 71, and 77) as examples of the poet’s invective technique. My aims are three: (1) to show through concrete examples how Catullan invective works, (2) to pro- vide a reading of these often neglected texts as iambos and not as evidence

Journal

Mnemosyne – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 1999

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