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[ SOLD OUT ] QUINN, K., Catullus. An Interpretation. Batsford, London, 1972. XI,305p. Hard bound with dust wrps. Spine gilt titled. Signature and date on free endpaper. 'The case that the corpus of Catullus' poetry that has come down to us was arranged for publication by the poet himself has recently been argued by Dr. Wiseman in his 'Catullan Question' (..). Quinn now goes a good deal further in presenting the collection as a designed and coherent whole. (...) We are to see it as 'a complex, cohering structure whose organizing principle is ironic, selective exploration; it takes the place of continuous argument, which is the technique of prose' (p.50).(...) If Quinn is right, and the whole of Catullus' extant oeuvre is to be seen as the portrayal of a society with, integrated into it, an inner portrayal of the relationship of two members of that society, then his work is a much more ambitious, complex, and elaborate example of the genre (...) than any of its successors. He deals with the corruption and moral failings of his contemporaries in a way for which Propertius and Ovid offer no analogy (...). Moreover Catullus' literary method is one which makes far greater demands on the reader, who is constrained to extract the message from a collection is which, first, the poems are grouped according to formal (metrical) criteria and, secondly, within these groupings pieces on related themes are deliberately separated from each other and presented in an apparently haphazard sequence (...). Quinn's discussion possesses the great merit of clarity, and needless critical jargon is mercifully rare.' (E.J. KENNEY in The Classical Review (New Series), 1976, pp.28-30). (Antiquarian) (approx. delivery time: undeliverable) ISBN: 9780713419818