Restoring to Catullus a provocative power that familiarity has tended to dim, this book argues that Catullus challenges us to think about the nature of lyric in new ways. Fitzgerald shows how Catullus's poetry reflects the conditions of its own consumption as it explores the terms and possibilities of the poet's license. Reading the poetry in relation to the drama of position played out between poet, poem, and reader, the author produces a fresh interpretation of almost all of Catullus's oeuvre. Running through the book is an analysis of the ideological stakes behind the construction of the author Catullus in twentieth-century scholarship and of the agenda governing the interpreter's position in relation to Catullus.

William Fitzgerald is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

"Exciting and provocative. . . . A really refreshing book. By directing attention away from Catullus the individual and onto the poetry, Fitzgerald focuses upon our reaction with the poetry and articulates Catullus's provocations to consider what kind of practice poetry is."—Susanna Morton Braund, The Classical Review

"Fitzgerald manages to break new ground. . . . A stimulating and thoughtful study of the poetry of Catullus."—Christopher Nappa, The Classical Journal

"An eloquent, compelling reorientation of Catullan’s questions grounded in the cultural context of the first century B.C. . . . Fitzgerald’s exposition is lucid, and his well-signposted arguments . . . neatly embed close readings of individual poems within the linguistic, social, and political contexts they evoke and manipulate. Fitzgerald’s well-plotted lucidity is a boon because his arguments are often subtle and complex, this is a book that both demand and repays close re-reading. . . . My urge to hustle off to the library and immerse myself in the echoes of these modern Catullan sound chambers is perhaps the best testimony I can give to the excitement of Fitzgerald’s readings incite."—Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"Fitzgerald reinterprets the lyrics of the first-century Roman by emphasizing Catullus's awareness and manipulation of the relative positions of the poet, the poem, and the reader. He explores such aspects as the erotics of poetry, obscenity, urbanity, the wronged lover, the golden age, and the death of a brother."—Book News