Katherine Wasdin

Eros at Dusk analyses the relationship between wedding poetry and love poetry in the ancient world. By treating both Greek and Latin texts, it offers a wide-ranging argument about connections between social occasions and traditional poetry. Weddings and love affairs are dramatically differentin their participants and their outcomes, but the discourses associated with these scenarios center on similar ideas of persuasion and praise. Furthermore, these texts make it clear that the wedding stands in contrast to the marriage as a brief idealized and eroticized moment. Specific themesorganize the book into chapters on the threshold; the evening star; plant and animal metaphors; heroic comparisons; reciprocity and the blessings of the gods; and sexual violence and persuasion. The two genres interact in a variety of ways: at times, they share traditional forms of eroticpersuasion, but at other points, one genre will purposefully allude to another to make a bride seem like a girlfriend or a girlfriend like a bride. Explicit divergences remind the audience of the different trajectories of the wedding, which will transition into a hopefully long-lasting marriage, andthe love affair, which is unlikely to endure with mutual affection. The consistency and durability of this intergeneric relationship demonstrates deep-seated ancient notions about legitimate and illegitimate sexual relationships.

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