Polemical Allusion to Lucretius in Tibullus
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The basic argument in this paper is twofold: first, that Lucretius serves as an important target of allusion in Tibullan elegy; second, that through allusions to the De Rerum Natura Tibullus affirms the validity of the elegiac view of love over Lucretius’ Epicurean perspective. Tibullus’ allusions to Lucretius are primarily polemical. On the one hand, Lucretius represented for Tibullus the first hexameter Latin poet who wrote extensively about the human experience of love. Lucretius thus served Tibullus as a prominent model against which he could juxtapose his own poetry; not only does Tibullus use the DRN as a literary cipher through which he elevates elegy over hexameter poetry, but also part of this elevation involves singling out Lucretius as a strident opponent of the amatory exploits valued in elegiac poetry. On the other hand, the specific allusions to Lucretius explored in this paper fall into two basic groups: direct allusions to Lucretius’ repudiation of love and its effects at the end of DRN IV and allusions to other areas of Lucretian philosophy. This second group of allusions always implies what is explicit in the first group, insofar as these allusions implicitly reaffirm the value of the amatory life that Lucretius had vehemently denied. The allusions to Lucretius in this second group regularly show that Tibullus appropriates materialist language from Lucretius and applies it to the realm of human emotion; in the process, he valorizes the emotionality that characterizes the amatory relationships endorsed in his own elegiac poetry. In the final analysis, then, Tibullus’ reception of Lucretius is undamentally oppositional, as Tibullus rejects the Lucretian perspective on love, religion, death, and the value of emotion.
keywordsTibullus, Lucretius, elegy, emotion, love, allusion, intertextualityBiografia dell'autoreUniversity of South Florida. Email: nethercut@usf.edu |
