Anglo-American Catullus since the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract

While Catullus was not unknown to major poets of the early twentieth century in England and the United States, a conspicuous resurgence of interest in his life and works marked the second half of the century. Explicit translations of his bawdiest poems are paralleled by poems expressing a sense of identification with the poet, who is treated as a confidant in matters of poetry and love. Recent novelists have produced three kinds of fiction revolving around Catullus: postfigurative works in which the poet’s life provides the model for plot and character in works set in the modern world; political fictions about Catullus’s age, in which the poet, while not the central figure, plays a significant role; and fictionalized biographies in which the tantalizing facts of his life are imaginatively fleshed out. Poets and novelists alike are intrigued by Catullus’s frankness in sexual matters and by his critical view of his own society-aspects that specifically appeal to the late twentieth century.