This addition to the library of Cambridge Companions is devoted to the rich surviving tradition of Latin love elegy. Devotees of the works of Propertius, Tibullus, Sulpicia, Ovid and the enigmatic Gallus will find much to celebrate in the two dozen contributions of this volume, which constitutes a true primer to a vast and challenging field of literary inquiry.
The volume opens with a valuable introduction both to the subsequent chapters and to the subject of Latin elegy more generally. Six sections provide an organisational scheme for the papers: (1) the literary and historical context in which Latin elegy developed and reached its heights; (2) the individual Latin elegiac poets whose works have survived in some fashion or other (including an important chapter by M. Skoie that considers the elegies of the so-called Corpus Tibullianum); (3) the social and cultural milieu that is presupposed and explored by the extant books of elegiac carmina; (4) the death of the genre in the history of Latin literature; (5) the survival of elegy in its multifaceted Nachleben; (6) metrical considerations of elegiac poetry.
Within these different sections, a wide range of relevant topics is explored. Those interested in reception studies will find material on (inter alia) late antique, medieval and Renaissance responses to Latin elegy; for the Vorleben of elegy, both Greek and earlier Latin precursors are thoroughly discussed. Given the inevitable space constraints of the genre of companions and readers, the editor has produced a fine handbook in terms of comprehensiveness; indeed, T.’s volume could be assigned as a required introductory text to the study of Latin love elegy, and can be read cover to cover with profit; her introduction is particularly valuable as a classroom vademecum (the relationship of Latin love elegy to New Comedy is especially nicely considered, as is the survey of scholarship on the genre).
For this is not a companion where the disparate papers do not meld together; while the authors come from a variety of critical approaches and schools of judgement on the poets under consideration, this book displays an admirable spirit of unity and cohesion. One does not feel jarred as the successive papers are read; while one could indeed dip here and there into the volume with profit, it is a particular joy to move straight through in the order of the contributions. Like the best examples of the companion genre, T.’s volume offers a coherent appraisal of the state of the field alongside a tantalising array of directions for further study; while the volume is eminently accessible to scholars from a variety and range of disciplines and levels of familiarity with both Latin and the literature in question, there is no chapter (including the closing one on metrics) that requires technical or specialised knowledge.
L. Piazzi's paper on elegy and other passages in Latin literature dealing with matters amatory offers a good example of the range and depth of the papers to be found here; her study of the fourth book of Lucretius and its influence on later poetry is especially well done. S. Harrison helps the reader to digest the challenging relationship between elegy and the moral and social laws of Augustan Rome. A. Keith's chapter on the puzzle that is Propertius stands forth as one of the most lucid and helpful introductions to that most problematic of surviving elegists. M. Drinkwater provides a succinct and neatly articulated account of the image of the militia amoris that accords especially well with L. Fulkerson's chapter on love's slavery (servitium amoris). J. Miller's brief essay on the last book of Propertius and Ovid's Fasti is another stellar entry in a volume replete with exceptional contributions. S. Loubère considers the reception of Latin love elegy in eighteenth-century France, and A. Kahn in Russia during the same period; the latter offers a welcome glance into an understudied area of classical reception studies. The chapter on metrics that closes the volume could easily be assigned as a useful introduction to a technical subject in either undergraduate or graduate courses in Latin poetry. Throughout, the footnotes to the various contributions regularly offer the reader an extensive guide to further reading.
A ‘dateline’ from the founding of Rome to Derek Walcott offers a useful guide to the reader (especially for the chronology of those elements of the elegiac afterlife that may be less familiar to classicists). A detailed index and list of works cited (itself a useful bibliography for further study of the genre) rounds out the volume.
T.’s Companion is a gem in a celebrated series. All students of Latin poetry and its afterlife will want to consult this volume. Latin love elegy has profited from a recent spate of important scholarly contributions, including major commentaries on hitherto understudied books from the surviving corpus. The present anthology of article-length studies provides a welcome oasis amid this procession of publications, a place both to take stock of the state of the field and to map out the next avenues for inquiry.
