LAT 322 - Elegy: Catullus to Ovid

Under the reign of Rome’s first emperor, a new genre of erotic poetry called elegy overturned traditional Roman values with its descriptions of affairs between elite men and lower class women. This genre flourished for just a few decades before its final practitioner, Ovid, was exiled for “a poem and a mistake.” In this class, students will read selections of Latin love elegy from its roots in Catullus to its end in Ovid, explore the genre’s challenges to traditional Roman systems of gender and status, and find out how a poem can get you kicked out of Rome.
 

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major
Counts towards the Latin minor and the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory

Prerequisites & Notes
Latin 201 or placement test. Students who have already taken a 200-level course beyond Latin 201 should enroll in LAT 322.