![]() ![]() Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions nor is it a large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world. In this way, Propertius shows that the narrative of elegy is no less bound up with occidental hegemony than that of Virgilian epic, and that elegy’s literary exoticism is, like Virgil’s intertextual appropriation of Greek literature, itself contingent on Roman imperialism. On the other hand, Propertian elegy has for its part become more occidental (Propertius sings of maxima Roma and the Roman victory at Actium Cynthia is dead). the Phrygian immigration as viewed by native Italy its oriental ‘heroines’ : Dido, Cleopatra and, if the episode to which she lends her name is not an interpolation, Helen). ![]() On the one hand, Propertius reads the Aeneid for its oriental components (e.g. Such a polarity is apparently constructed in the ‘epic’ and ‘elegiac’ movements of Propertius 4.1, but it is also progressively deconstructed in Propertius’ reception of Virgil’s Aeneid in elegies 4.1, 4.6 and 4.9. This article explores the extent to which the genres of epic and elegy can be considered ‘occidental’ and ‘oriental’ respectively. ![]()
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