The dichotomy between lover and poet; the relationship with comedy; the force of the metre: these are the considerations that have told most in recent years in the interpretation of Catullus' poem 8, Miser Catulle.

Wheeler, following Morris, takes the poem as a comic exercise. Fordyce, Fraenkel and Quinn think of it as a serious examination of the lover's internal conflict. Commager (‘if it would be foolish to deny the poem's comic overtones, it would be equally foolish to maintain that those are the only ones’) juggles with the two. One conviction that seems shared by most, however, is that the poem, in a sense, describes full circle, returning to its starting point.