The elegiac self

ABSTRACT. Latin erotic elegy is explored as a space of subjectivity, a tragic fracture between the individual ego and the consenting community, a shift from a physical to a psychological level, which occurs through the unsettling of boundaries between the self and the other. The association of eroticism and fall is indicative of a movement from the public to the private sphere, leading to the reconstruction of the subject, while preserving a conventional and ritualistic function of the mask. pp. 143–154

Keywords: Latin poetry; elegy; mask; eroticism; ego; other