Underworld(s) in lyric and elegiac Roman poetry: generic borders and distinctions

• Grant number: 15/23757-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: March 15, 2016
• End date: July 14, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Sérgio de Vasconcellos
• Grantee: Paulo Sérgio de Vasconcellos
• Host Investigator: Stephen John Harrison
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Oxford, England

Abstract

At Corpus Christi College (Oxford) I will conduct a research project on the descriptions of the underworld in lyric and elegiac Roman poetry, from Catullus to the Augustans. Our focus will be on the specificities of such descriptions in the different poetic genres and on the portraits of dead poets in poetry (e.g. Amores III, 9). Through close readings of the texts, based on studies of poetic genres in Antiquity, career criticism, reception and intertextuality, I intend to contribute to the discussion about the boundaries between the lyric and the elegiac genres and to the study of the rhetorical construction of poets' images in Roman poetic discourse.