The Tibullan Dream Text

Abstract

This paper argues that Tibullus' poems are best read as complex, multi-voiced dream texts that construct world at once idyllic and nightmarish. It is world that modulates, at times almost imperceptibly, between images of the poet-subject as now humble farmer, now urbane poet, now exclusus amator, now feverwracked soldier, now loyal cliens, now moralizing social critic, now praeceptor amoris, now pederast spumed (Fineberg 24). Nor is this polyphonic quality of Tibullan verse simply function of the variety of poems found in the corpus, for even within single poem the poet often seems not unified subject but rather, in W. R. Johnson's words, a sheer discontinuum, fragmentations of self and work and love, (a series of) multiple and mutually exacerbating conflicts (108). This inconstant quality of Tibullan verse and the Tibullan subject has presented many problems for the poet's modem readers, and can be seen as one factor in his