Marriage contracts, fides and gender roles in propertius 3.20

• Melanie Racette-Campbell ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Toronto

     University of Toronto

     Canadá

     
• Localización: Classical journal, ISSN 0009-8353, Vol. 108, Nº 3, 2013, págs. 297-317
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper considers the ways in which Propertius both makes and undermines his lover-poet's claims of elegiac fidelity in 3.20. This poem depicts the elegiac relationship as simultaneously marriage-like and non-marital by using the language of fidelity, drawing on both its traditional associations with legal ceremonies and agreements and its elegiac sense. Propertius uses the lover-poet's relationship to fides to have him occupy multiple and contradictory male roles in the poem. Ultimately, he fails to conform to any of them, which destabilizes the gender roles of the characters in the poem.