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VEYNE, P., L'Élégie Érotique Romaine. L'amour, la poésie et l'occident. Du Seuil, Paris, 1983. 251p. Paperback. Series: Pierres Vives. ‘A greater interest in systems than individuals leads V. to ground his study of Latin elegy in a history of love. In V.’s view, love is not a psychic constant but a cultural creation, and any ancient practice of eroticism is propelled not by a supposedly ‘universal’ dynamic of love but by the specific codes which governed love’s operations in the ancient world. V. thus brings to love poetry the same techniques of analysis that he has applied to Greek myth. (…) Like myth and truth then, love and literature are not immutable terms, and the study of Latin love poetry entails the study of the cultural system of which it is just one expression. Within this theoretical framework, an author.s poetic ‘confession’ of love becomes not the personal expression of thranshistorical sentiment but a culturally specific discourse. (…) V. provides a valuable service in attempting to establish the conceptual structures which underpinned the writing of love in first-century B.C. Rome. (…) V. follows the recommendation of Foucault himself in ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?’ (…) and challenges the authority of the author. For V. demonstrates that the power of ancient moral discourse constrains both the love-poet and his poetic utterances. Erotic language transcends the individual user’s control. Foucault was not concerned with literary analysis when he constructed a history of sexuality. V., however, is aware of the peculiar, discursive status of literary eroticism. To Foucault’s study of prescriptive texts, V. adds a new dimension - poetics. In ‘Roman Erotic elegy’ he is deeply concerned with the whole issue of textual interpretation, with the hermeneutics of erotic confession. (…) V. ascribes historicity not only to love, but also to the process of writing and of reading first-person erotic narratives. (…) V. concerns himself fruitfully with the codes that govern the role of elegiac text’s reader and narrator ion the construction of literary meaning. Drawing on the work of Russian formalists, reception theorists, semioticians, narratologists and Marxist literary critics, V. looks beyond the author to historically determined systems of reading and writing as an explanation of the literary work. Firstly, V. provides the reader with a substantial role in the literary process. (…) Secondly (…), V. takes as his starting-point not the life-styles of the elegiac poets but their narrative techniques. (…) Probably V.’s most significant contribution to the study of elegy is his ensuing analysis of the rules which governed first-person narration in antiquity. V.’s detailed exploration of the poetic self, the traditional codes which governed the construction of the authorial Ego, should have a lasting effect on future scholarship in the field.' (MARIA WYKE on the 1988 English translation in The Journal of Roman Studies,1989, pp.166-68). From the library of Professor Carl Deroux. € 25.00 (Antiquarian) ISBN: 9782020065559