Catullus’ Bedspread audiobook

The author reconstructs Catullus' life from his poems and contemporaneous historical accounts. Besides his poetry, Catullus is most famous for his affair with Clodia, the sister of the demagogue Publius Clodius Pulcher and the wife of former consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer. Many of his poems are quite scatological, and others are outright attacks on people, including Caesar. It's a very interesting look at Rome during the last years of the Republic.

Fantastic read bring Catullus and his poems back to live

A wonderful journey into the world of one of Rome's best, enduring, and at one time controversial poets. A story of the end of the Roman Republic cleverly interwoven with his poems. Daisy Dunn has linked Catullus' poems so well with the issues of that day, and explained the double meanings we miss out on reading the poems in translation so well, that this book deserves to go to the top of any person who wishes to find out more about Roman poetry.

Wow is the subtitle ill-advised and stupid. This is quite a good book, and quite an interesting take on it all - but I can already see that it is better to think of this book as a novel than as a biography of a poet we basically don't know anything about. As a novel, this is actually (being honest) extremely well written and well worth reading.I'm not sure I agree with many of Dunn's opinions on Catullus's relationships, and her timeline, but I suppose that isn't the point. This book is, though, very well written, and very well researched - even if it assumes Dunn's opinions as fact, there is absolutely no evidence Catullus died at age 30 in Rome. He simply disappears from the record, anything could have happened to him, his death is just the safest bet. However, she is a lecturer in Classics, so her opinions and guesses are obviously informed enough to carry some weight. This is worth reading, and it's even a lot of fun. But I do not think it should be taken as bible paper or anything.

Considering so little is known about this scurrilously wickedly good poet she has created an imaginative, accessible portrait of him. Wonderful.

Not quite historical fiction but the type where the author says things like, "Catullus walked up the Palatine, sweating profusely in the Roman summer" -- things that are plausibly true but ultimately unprovable. However, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Dunn brought together a wealth of resources to provide an invaluable overall CONTEXT not only for the life of Catullus but also for his poems. Now I finally know who each person is (was), what was going on in Roman politics and social life, etc., to explain each poem. It makes me want to set this as required reading for my high school students when we get to the unit on Catullus.

Not quite biography, not quote literary criticism or straight translation, this hybrid of a book mixes the genres to make a classical cocktail that really hits the spot.

good, wouldn't call his poetry erotic tho more vulgar

It was an easy read, but it takes a LOT of liberties.

Great fun for any fan of Catullus or Roman history in general.

Na verdade, é impossível fazer uma biografia de Catulo, pois não existem dados. Então, a única saída é pegar a época emque ele viveu, criar com isso um pano de fundo e preencher o livro com expressões como "Catulo pode bem ter presenciado...", "Pode ser que Catulo tenha sentido x quando viu/soube ..." e preencher os espaços com coisas mais ou menos conhecidas. Até aí, bem, é história. Mas, então, precisamos ancorar Catulo nessas anedotas e, nesse momento, o livro assume uma premissa no mínimo perigosa: a poesia de Catulo *é* autobiográfica. Como não existem dados biográficos independentes, não há como sustentar a tese, que deve ser portanto aceita como é, o que torna a poesia dele mais localizada e suja do que gostaríamos de ver em um poeta cujo trabalho sobreviveu dois milênios. Devemos então ver aquelas hipérboles pornográficas como descrições? Por que elas sim e, quando o poeta fala em viagens e costumes, devemos dizer "não"? Enfim, com muita sensibilidade e cuidado, a autora inventa uma vida para Catulo, usando mais bom senso que base erudita.