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Abstract:
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Latin erotic poetry is an important genre recording surviving examples of male friendship . This report argues that a specific group of poems involving the poet and his powerful friend should be identified and studied separately as a sub -genre . Drawing examples largely from Horace , Catullus and Propertius , I argue that homosocial erotic poetry exploits the same repertoire of generic conventions as erotic poetry , but reshapes some of them for different functions . To articulate the erotic emphasis and the generic concern of this report , Eve Sedgwick’s notion of “homosocial desire” (1985 ) is introduced . The concept of homosociality is useful in revealing how male desire in our sub -genre has an erotic tinge and functions to foster the social bond of male friendship , but precludes the homoerotic possibility . Chapter One introduces the important terms and methodology chosen for this study , while Chapters Two to Four define and describe three distinctive features of the sub -genre . Chapter Two is devoted to showing that sermo amatorius , the “love speech” often featured in romantic relationships , can be assimilable to the structure of male homosocial relations . Chapters Three and Four examine how the sub -genre reshapes the recusatio and the topos of wealth to negotiate the tension of desire between the poets and their powerful friends . Ultimately , this report argues that male homosocial desire motivates the sub -generic conventions and thereby the seemingly disparate poems constitute a coherent sub -generic classification . |