Taking Back the Text Poetic Technique in Catullus, Propertius and Tibullus

TBTT description The love lyrics of Catullus have gripped the thoughts of poets and lovers of poetry ever since they burst out of the mind of the Latin writer two millenia ago. The violence and directness, even obscenity of Catullus’s addresses to his mistress are as stunning today as they were in the days of Caesar. “Let us live, Lesbia, and let us love,” he wrote, in a literary tradition that continued on in the works of Propertius and Tibullus, and still vibrates in the consciousness of lovers and poets.In this sensitive analysis of some of the most striking of the lyrics of the three poets, John Warden provides a deep insight into the techniques of composition that make the poetry so vibrant. Probing the details of metre, alliteration, poetic allusion, the use of individual sounds of vowels and consonants, he shows how the poets achieved the effects they sought. This is an enlightening criticism, an examination of poetic methods in terms of specific choices, showing how a decision about sound or metre or reference fits the context of a poem and makes its meaning.Taking Back the Text is, however, more than an explication of great poetry. It is a lesson book for poets, its discussions and examples providing guidance for the writing of poetry even today. Because it provides translations along with the texts, the concepts and demonstrations are completely accessible to readers who do not know Latin. What works for a lyric two thousand years old will serve a poet writing today or tomorrow, and this analysis of poetic style is meaningful for every time, every place. Poems are language, and achieve their meaning with sounds and arrangements of words and lines. Warden shows with startling clarity just what the specific sounds and words do to present meaning, and presents a study of poetry unique in its detail and originality. By treating the work of different poets on the same themes, Warden makes abundantly clear how artists use specific writing techniques to create works of brilliant originality even though they are treating the same issues of human life and experience. At the same time as he shows the characteristics of three very different poets, he demonstrates how poetic technique can fashion lyrics of timeless and universal appeal.

John Warden in Professor of Latin at Scarborough College of The University of Toronto, and is the author of The Poems of Propertius and many books and articles on Latin literature