Letum non omnia finit : reading Vergilian intertextuality in Propertius 4

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to assess the extent and nature of Propertius' reception of Vergil in Book 4 of his elegies. Vergil's death preceded the publication of Propertius 4 by at least three years, thereby enabling the elegist to contemplate the Vergilian oeuvre in toto and, perhaps, to offer the first in what is an ongoing tradition of responses to it. Vergil's influence on late Propertian elegy is often sensed but rarely pursued; outside of a few obvious passages (in 4.1, 4.6, and 4.9), it is felt that to pinpoint Propertius' reading of Vergil is a hazardous enterprise, owing to the tightness of the chronology and the divergent interests of the epic and elegiac genres. A clear appraisal of the situation is therefore needed. This thesis presents a systematic compiladon of Propertio-Vergilian intertexts, and suggests some ways in which these may be read. Chapter 1 ('Introduction') surveys the 'status quaestionis' since Reisch’s 'Properz-Studien' of 1887, sets out some theoretical preliminaries vis-a-vis allusion and intertextuality, and explores these in practice through a case study of elegy 4.9, here read as a 'metanarrative' for the allusive process itself Also discussed in this chapter are elegies 1.9 and 2.34, in which Vergil is mentioned implicitly and explicitly respectively. It is argued that the latter rewrites Vergilian poetry' to dichotomise Vergilian and Propertian poetics, but in a way that leaves the door open to the possibility' of rapprochement between the two.