THE TEXTUALIZATION OF DISPLAY Stroup, Sarah Culpepper
Catullus, Cicero, and a Society of Patrons,
04/2010
Book Chapter
Ligarianam praeclare uendidisti. posthac quicquid scripsero tibi praeconium deferam. quod ad me de Varrone scribis, scis me antea orationes aut aliquid id genus solitum scribere ut Varronem nusquam ...possem intexere. postea autem quam haec coepi φιλολογώτερα, iam Varro mihi denuntiauerat magnam sane et grauem προσφώνησιν.Ep. Att. 13. 12. 2–3 (45 BCE)You have done a tremendous job marketing my pro Ligario! From here on out, whatever I write – I will leave the publicity to you. As for what you write to me of Varro, you know that in the past I have written my orationes – for lack of a better word – in such a way that I could never weave Varro into the tapestry. But just as I have begun these more literary pursuits, now Varro has announced that he will dedicate to me a work of some substance!In 45 BCE, at the end of a long and successful career as an orator and shortly before his own untimely death, Cicero wrote to Atticus for advice in the matters of textual publication, composition, and exchange. These lines, in which Cicero first tips his hat to the orality of his origins (orationes) and then praises the potential of his recent and more literary compositions (haec…φιλολογώτερα), embody the competing concerns that faced the textual communities of the late Republic.
Epilogue Stroup, Sarah Culpepper
Catullus, Cicero, and a Society of Patrons,
04/2010
Book Chapter
In examining the terminological, rhetorical, and sociopractical intersections between Catullus and Cicero, we have been able to uncover a bit more of the textual story of the late Republic. And yet, ...mapping the textual practices of the late Republic onto the ongoing continuum of ancient textual culture and the “textualization” of culture as a whole, leaves us with one further question: what happened next?There is of course no monolithic answer to such a monolithic question. What happened to the text and the textual world in later periods? To a certain extent I would respond that the Principate of Augustus, and the resultant blooming of textual culture in the Principate and early Empire, is what “happened” to the text and the textual community that fostered it. As isonomic textual prestation seems to have all but disappeared in this later period – it might indeed be argued that under the social and political structure of the Principate textual isonomy had become well-nigh impossible – there arose an immensely productive system of the sort of hierarchically organized literary patronage investigated by White and others. Yet as much as the textual efflorescence of the Principate and Empire may seem to have little in common with the practices of the earlier periods, the disjuncture between these two periods is not so great. Indeed, the Augustan textual world has its roots firmly planted in the soil of the Republic, and the points of contact and lines of continuity suggested in this study will, I think, be useful for ongoing investigations into these later periods.
For when I open a medieval manuscript, and this is different from opening a printed book, I am conscious not only of the manu-script, the bodily handling of materials in production, writing, ...illumination, but also how in its subsequent reception, the parchment has been penetrated; how it has acquired grease stains, thumb-marks, erasures, drops of sweat; suffered places where images have been kissed away by devout lips or holes from various eating animals.1If Freud's Shoe was never merely a shoe,2 and Marx's Table was never merely a table,3 it is safe to say that, for the late Republic, the patronal-class dedicated text was very rarely merely a patronal-class dedicated text. The phenomenon of a text being, at least potentially, more than just a text – the phenomenon of the received value of the whole (volume) transcending in value the sum of its material and intellectual components – is one likely naturalized by most readers of this text. But as the fact of this naturalization might be considered to be the single most important contribution of the textual community of the late Republic, it will be useful to finish our study with those aspects of the late Republican community that speak most strongly to those periods that follow, from the obsessively textual worlds of the Principate and Empire to the social and intellectual engagement with textual materiality as it continues into our time.
MORE THAN JUST TEXTS: FETISH AS “ACTING OBJECT”That Catullus is an author deeply invested in the variously figured homosocial relationships between reader and poet has been well established, as has ...his use of exchanged uersiculi in the poetics of both an elite Roman manhood and his own self-positioning in the lyric construction of such.1 The studies of, for example, Fitzgerald, Janan and D. Wray have greatly advanced our understanding of a late Republican “literary masculinity,” and have established Catullus as an author of wide-reaching import and influence for later modes of poetic communication and homosocial negotiation. These studies have helped to reconstruct the homosocial aesthetic of the late Republican textual world and have provided much of the theoretical foundation upon which my discussions in the following sections are constructed. What I want to do in this chapter, however, is to take poems that have been noted for their function as creators (and challengers, and products) of “literary masculinity,” resituate them in terms of the late Republican textual world, and consider how they functioned in this world qua their status – one that is often emphasized by Catullus – as variously materialized, “givable” objects.The theme of poetic materiality and textual exchange – of giving the “textual gift” – runs intermittently throughout the Catullan corpus, and it might reasonably be argued that any of the poems that address or allude to a second party might be seen as contributing to the ongoing creation of the late Republican textual world.
Preface and acknowledgments Stroup, Sarah Culpepper
Catullus, Cicero, and a Society of Patrons,
04/2010
Book Chapter
At many places in the writing of this book – a book about texts, and about textual culture, and about the peculiarly and painfully self-conscious sort of writing by which these texts are dedicated ...and this culture is defined – I have not been entirely sure what it is I need to do (or rather, to write) in order to make my point. This, I am happy to say, is not one of them (I attribute this fortuity to the fact that I have read several books myself). This is the part of the book where I am, first, to write of the deeply personal origins of this work. This is the part of the book where I am, second, to detail for you the ways in which these origins blossomed into the text you hold in your hands. This is the part of the book where I am, third, to thank solemnly the many people who saw this work to its fruition. This is the part of the book where I am, fourth, to express my deep affection for the many people in my life whose friendship, advice, and patience saw me through this work. In other words, this is the part of the book where I am to engage in a process of dedication. And so this is what I shall do.
