Texisse and Nudare: Sulpicia's Poetics and the Fashioning of Roman Elegy
Date Thesis Awarded
5-2017
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Classical Studies
Advisor
Vassiliki Panoussi
Committee Members
John Donahue
Nathan Rabalais
Abstract
This paper will map out the interplay of public and private spaces in Sulpicia’s poems, examining not only physical location -- which is often unclear -- but also analyzing the related interplay between publication and secrecy, city and country, speech and silence, active and passive roles, and presence and absence of a family network. This extended series of analogies -- between physical space, manner of speech, and status within relationships with others -- will form the basis for this study. Furthermore, I investigate these opposites in the broader elegiac context. Mapping these multiple elegiac dichotomies onto a public/private framework will allow us to read Sulpicia’s work as dealing repeatedly with the theme of public versus private, an overarching concern in her poetry which is obvious from the first poem opening the collection.
Recommended Citation
Simon, Abigail, "Texisse and Nudare: Sulpicia's Poetics and the Fashioning of Roman Elegy" (2017). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 2248.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/2248
