Breaking the frame: from Catullus 64 to ancient metalepsis

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The proposed research will lead to a commentary on Catullus 64, with newly edited text, to be published in the CUP series Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries (the 'orange' series). Research on a recurring aspect of Catullus 64, metalepsis or the breaking of the narrative frame, will be used to launch a collaborative exploration of metalepsis in Greek and Roman literature.Catullus 64 is a miniature epic (just over 400 lines) from the mid-first century BC. After a misleading opening implying that it will be about the Argonauts, it narrates the meeting and marriage of Peleus and Thetis, parents of Achilles. More than half of it, however, is an extended description ('ecphrasis') of the couple's marriage bed, on the coverlet of which is a picture of the abandoned Ariadne. This is a very atypical ecphrasis: the depicted Ariadne utters a lengthy speech. When the narration returns to the wedding, the Fates sing a song prophesying Achilles' heroic but bloody exploits, and the poem suddenly ends with a conclusion in which the narrator laments the moral decline of civilisation since the heroic age.Like Catullus' other poetry, 64 is both central to and problematic for Classical scholarship. Catullus wrote under the late Roman Republic in political circumstances very different from those of the Augustan and imperial periods from which so much widely studied Latin poetry comes. His small corpus covers a large and unpredictable range of genres, and 64, his longest poem, has always created its own problems for critics. Modern discussions, in articles and occasional monographs, have pursued various lines of inquiry, with a particularly clear dichotomy between accounts that see 64 as 'about' something external to itself - whether Catullus' own emotional life or his attitude to his times - and those that see it as 'about' aspects of its own poetic nature - such as ecphrasis, intertextuality, or narrative confusion. Meanwhile, readers of the poem still rely on inadequate commentaries, usually constrained in scope by their appearance within commentaries on the whole Catullan corpus.The proposed commentary will transform our understanding of Catullus 64 by offering important new literary interpretations of the poem that are both informed by up-to-date, theoretically aware approaches to Roman poetry and based on a thoroughgoing reassessment of the problems of the text from the scale of the individual word upwards. Simultaneously, it will be an essential, reliable tool for researchers and students in the wider fields of Greek and Roman literature and cultural history. It will also demonstrate that commentary remains a form of essential importance in Classics, but one that should be constantly reinvigorated through self-critical reflection: I shall make a practical contribution to this by collaborating with another early career commentator to hold a workshop for commentary writers, with an emphasis on commentators at the beginning of their careers who will be taking the form forward in the future. One aspect of Catullus 64's literary depth and complexity is its recurring use of metalepsis. Metalepsis is the breaking of the frame between narrative levels, for instance an author and his text, or Ariadne on the coverlet and the wedding-guests who are gazing at her. It is a concept which has only recently begun to be discussed in Classics, but could lead to fresh and interesting interpretations of key phenomena in ancient literature. To stimulate research in this area I shall convene an international conference on metalepsis in a wide range of Greek and Roman texts, again collaborating with an early career colleague, and I shall speak myself on metalepsis across Catullus' poetry.While the main research outputs are aimed at the academic community, it will be possible to communicate some of the fruits of the research in a programme of impact activities: talks in schools and art galleries and articles in educational magazines.