The heterosexual tradition of homoerotic poetics

The point of departure for this project was the hypothesis that the concept of love in Roman poetry represents a turning point in the literary history of the West. This hypothesis was controversial, but well founded. Before Roman love poetry ancient literature normally presents love either as a result of divine intervention, as in the case of epic and tragedy, or as the pretext for marriage and children, as in the case of New Attic and Roman comedy. In Roman love poetry, which flourished in the last fifty years before the common era, a love for love's sake is fostered, which has no heavenly cause or external purpose; in fact, the Roman love poets explicitly reject both marriage and procreation. This form of love has, in its primarily heterosexual form (which is not its only form in the ancient sources), been very influential, even globally, through to the present day. Having reached the end of the project period, it has become clear that two crucial elements in this love poetry are 1) an asymptotic wish for equality between the lover and the beloved, even if the social relationship between the two is inherently asymmetrical, and 2) an ambition that the love should take the form of mutual physical pleasure. These findings are controversial in the existing research on erotics in Antiquity, which rather focuses on asymmetries between the lover and the beloved (as in Dover's classic Greek Homosexuality, 1978) and on control rather than enjoyment of the sexual act (especially in Foucault's Histoire de la sexualité, vol. 3, 1984). One explanation of the conspicuous differences between our findings and those of previous research appears to be our focus on poetry rather than prose, and especially philosophy, e.g. in the works of Dover and Foucault. Against the background of our findings, the assumption that poetry is more mainstream than philosophical and medical texts regarding ideas of love in Antiquity has largely been confirmed. Three main lines of enquiry have been pursued throughout this project: 1) the homoerotic, female poet Sappho's influence on Roman love poets; 2) the sexually ambiguous figure of Orpheus throughout Antiquity and beyond; and 3) the relationship between New Attic and Roman comedy and Roman love poetry. These lines of enquiry have so far yielded a number of results, disseminated, for example, in the multi-authored volume Roman Receptions of Sappho (Oxford University Press, 2019), edited by the principle investigator Thea S. Thorsen and research project member Stephen Harrison.

Kjærlighet er et ideologisk vepsebol i mange kulturer. Prosjektets hovedmål var å demonstrere forbindelsen mellom gresk homoerotisk poesi og den dominerende poetiske tradisjonen som oppsto mot slutten av den romerske republikken, ca 50 f.Kr. Delmålene var å avdekke homerotiske aspekter i denne romerske poesien og legge til rette for nye fremstilinger av denne poesiens resepsjon også etter antikken. Prosjektet har i stor grad nådd disse målene i og med at vesentlige funn er blitt gjort som bekrefter prosjektets hypoteser, som enten allerede er blitt eller holder på å bli tilgjengeliggjort for det internasjonale forskningsfelleskapet både i anerkjente publiseringskanaler og i form av avhandlinger. Ved å vise hvordan likeverd er et kjærlighetsideal som også kan, ikke nødvendigvis, men potensielt, omfatte homoerotiske konstellasjoner og gi rom til kvinnestemmer, både fiktive og historiske, har prosjektet bidratt til å myndiggjøre ofte marginaliserte grupperinger i diskurser om kjærlighet.

The project challenges existing scholarship and provides new models concerning the crucial question of heterosexual constellations in Roman literature of the pre-Augustan and Augustan period (c. 60 BC-10 AD) represented by authors such as Catullus, Vergil, Tibullus, Horace and Ovid. With its predominantly heterosexual protagonists, this radically new form of Roman literature that came to birth in this period is almost exclusively explained as a development from the theatrical genre of comedy. However, the comedy model cannot account for its most typical characteristics. The present project will map the connection between the Roman corpus and preceding Greek homoerotic poetry, represented by authors such as Alcman, Sappho, Callimachus and Theocritus (c. 700-200 BC). This poetry shares virtually all the major generic features of the subsequent Roman tradition, with the single major exception that they display homoerotic and not heterosexual couples. The project will thus, for the first time, establish and examine the connection between these two central traditions of ancient literature. The question is of vital importance because it changes our understanding of Roman representation of love, which has had an unparalleled influence on Western culture and literature up until the present day. The project will promote and further develop the career of a very promising young scholar. The project involves Norwegian and international collaborators with particular competence relevant for implementation of the project. Professor Stephen Harrison, University of Oxford, a world-leading expert on Latin literature will be included in the nucleus group as adjunct professor. The project proposes an ambitious publication schedule and the publication experience of the project manager as well as the various members of the group will be essential to reach the goals in this plan. The project has important implications for central issues in the global culture of today.