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- From: jim@vivarium.sas.upenn.edu (Jim O'Donnell)
- Newsgroups: sci.classics
- Subject: Re: Looking for the Title of a Poem
- Message-ID: <102350@netnews.upenn.edu>
- Date: 16 Dec 92 20:13:20 GMT
- References: <1992Dec8.144852.5465@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
- Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
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- Nntp-Posting-Host: vivarium.sas.upenn.edu
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- The notion that Lesbia's sparrow is phallic in significance was a commonplace
- in Renaissance scholarship, on which see the forthcoming volume *Catullus in
- the Renaissance* by J.H. Gaisser of Bryn Mawr College. The idea is a silly
- over-reading, and requires no party-pooper, merely a scholar, to confute it.
- The idea that Catullus 2 or 3 refers to Lesbia's masturbation is a novel one,
- but equally far-fetched. When Catullus wishes to write about sex, he is quite
- capable of doing it himself, without later readers doing it for him!
-
- Jim O"Donnell
- Classics, U. of Penn.
- jodonnel@sas.upenn.edu
-