Hymn

Watson, J. R.

doi:10.1002/9780470693537.ch7

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 4 publications

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“…In c. 37, Catullus' abusive attack on Lesbia's lovers in the 'randy inn' is constituted both by the graffiti dicks (sopiones, 10) he threatens to paint on its walls and by the poem's own description of those dicks and of the act of painting them. 47 Furthermore, the painting and writing of these mimetic dicks also equate to Catullus' threatened, hypermasculine penetration of his targets (una ducentos irrumare sessores, 37.8), his response to their (projected) emasculating belief that only they have dicks (solis putatis esse mentulas uobis, 37.3). The equivalence between textual and sexual violence is even closer in c. 16, where the threat of anal and oral rape is enacted by the poem itself.…”

Section: Executing Cominius: the Practical Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dismembering Cominius: Political Violence and Iambic Aggression in Catullus 108

Cowan

2021

Antichthon

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Carmen 108 is one of the most neglected and unloved in the Catullan corpus. When it is mentioned in scholarship, it is either as a distastefully extreme instance of iambic invective or the object of a prosopographical exercise in identifying the addressee, Cominius. Gnilka alone has tried to situate it in the context of late Republican political violence, in particularly public lynching. Instead of isolating these two aspects of the poem from each other, this article argues that c. 108 is a self-conscious exploration of the interaction between poetic form and hors-texte. The terms of the invective situate it firmly within the tradition of Archilochean and Hipponactean iambos and it may even allude directly to a fragment of the latter. Yet the threats of violence are transformed when recontextualized within the world of the late Republic, where such literary violence was very much a reality. The poem performs a symbolic dismemberment of Cominius’ body, but one that cannot be safely separated from acts of mob violence in the period. The pragmatics of Catullan iambos explores the limits of verbal violence as speech-act and the point at which hate-speech becomes indistinguishable from the violence it incites.

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Section: Executing Cominius: the Practical Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dismembering Cominius: Political Violence and Iambic Aggression in Catullus 108

Cowan

2021

Antichthon

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Hymn

Cited by 1 publication

References 4 publications

Dismembering Cominius: Political Violence and Iambic Aggression in Catullus 108

Dismembering Cominius: Political Violence and Iambic Aggression in Catullus 108

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