Jennifer Ingleheart

A major re-evaluation of the poet A. E. Housman through the connections between his poetry and classical scholarship, revealing for the first time how closely they are intertwined. This must-read for scholars of Housman and those interested in the history of Classical scholarship showcases the first ever translations of Housman's Latin poetry including the first full-length study of his homoerotic Latin elegy for Moses Jackson, and close readings of Praefanda, Housman’s little-read yet notorious scholarly article on sexual themes, written in Latin. Further, it examines how Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love grapples with the tensions in Housman’s dual careers as poet and professor. Housman has long been seen as a man divided: the emotional poet of A Shropshire Lad on one hand, and the austere Latinist on the other. While he publicly downplayed the classical influences on his poetry, this book interrogates the subtle but intricate classicism woven throughout his work. By reading his verse alongside his scholarship, it uncovers a more integrated and complex figure, shedding new light on both his poetry and academic writings.

The first book to bring together A.E. Housman’s poetry and classical scholarship, revealing the deep connections between the two. It offers the first full-length study of his Latin elegy for Moses Jackson, including a new translation and commentary on this homoerotic poem’s links to his wider verse. The book also provides an original version and close reading of Praefanda, Housman’s little-read yet notorious scholarly article on sexual themes, written in Latin. Further, it examines how Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love grapples with the tensions in Housman’s dual careers as poet and professor. Housman has long been seen as a man divided—the emotional poet of A Shropshire Lad on one hand, and the austere Latinist on the other. While he publicly downplayed the classical influences on his poetry, this book interrogates the subtle but intricate classicism woven throughout his work. By reading his verse alongside his scholarship, it uncovers a more integrated and complex figure, shedding new light on both his poetry and academic writings.

The Classics were core to the curriculum and ethos of the intensely homosocial Victorian and Edwardian public schools, yet ancient homosexuality and erotic pedagogy were problematic to the educational establishment, which expurgated classical texts with sexual content. This volume analyses the intimate and uncomfortable nexus between the Classics, sex, and education primarily through the figure of the schoolmaster Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge (1890-1918), whose clandestine writings not only explore homoerotic desires but also offer insightful comments on Classical education. Now a marginalized figure, Bainbrigge's surviving works - a verse drama entitled Achilles in Scyros featuring a cross-dressing Achilles and a Chorus of lesbian schoolgirls, and a Latin dialogue between schoolboys - vividly demonstrate the queer potential of Classics and are marked by a celebration of the pleasures of sex and a refusal to apologize for homoerotic desire. Reprinted here in their entirety, they are accompanied by chapters setting them in their social and literary context, including their parallels with the writings of Bainbrigge's contemporaries and near contemporaries, such as John Addington Symonds, E. M. Forster, and A. E. Housman. What emerges is a provocative new perspective on the history of sexuality and the place of the Classics within that history, which demonstrates that a highly queer version of Classics was possible in private contexts.

Introductory essays by Jennifer Ingleheart discuss Ovid's historical and literary context, and offer an overview of the Amores as a whole. In addition, each poem is accompanied by an exploratory essay. The Latin text is supplied, and at the back of the book are extensive language and explanatory notes. All words not included in the GCSE Defined Vocabulary List are glossed.

A major work of Latin literature, Tristia 2 is a verse letter addressed by the exiled poet Ovid to the man who banished him from Rome, the emperor Augustus. Ovid apologizes to Augustus for the misdemeanours that led to his banishment, but, more importantly, defends both his life and his poetry in light of the accusation that his earlier Ars amatoria (The Art of Love) had promoted adultery. Jennifer Ingleheart's commentary, the most up-to-date and comprehensive one available, is an invaluable guide to all aspects of the poem - textual, literary, historical, and political - while her Introduction explores, among other topics, its ironical and subversive aspects.