Catullus Through his Books: Dramas of Composition

Modern readings of the Roman poet Catullus’ work have always been constrained by doubts about the surviving text. Does the sequence of our corpus reflect the artistically coherent and meaningful arrangement of the poems? Why are the various parts of the collection so jarringly different in content and emotional tone? To what extent, if at all, can we explain these shifts by appealing to Catullus’ famously vivid portrayals of his emotions and life circumstances? Catullus Through his Books argues that we possess three separate books of poems designed by the poet himself; at key moments in these books, the poems dramatise the creative activity of their own composition, embedding apparent autobiographical details and purportedly revealing the poet’s intentions and goals. These dramas of composition direct us through the poems, integrating our understanding of each part and generating a holistic vision of Catullus as poet of self-destroying longing and irreparable loss.