Abstract
This book collects the papers of Oliver Lyne, and was conceived by a group of his former pupils and colleagues as a memorial to Oliver. To make it the more accessible, effective, and compact, it was eventually decided to omit papers which were particularly short or technical, or which had been superseded through Oliver's later work or changes of view. Oliver's output may be grouped into three periods: the first (A) from the beginning to the publication of The Latin Love Poets (1980); the second (B) from 1983 to the publication of Horace: Behind the Public Poetry (1995); the third (C) the papers that followed. The papers (like the books) present a striking concentration on the most well-known period of Latin poetry, from c.60 BC to c.20 AD, and show particular concern with the relation of personal and public poetry. Period A is chiefly preoccupied with personal poetry, which is conceived as reflecting actual personality and opinions. Period B deals with poetry which seems to present a public and Augustan stance. This stance, however, is undermined; undermining indeed (with its more devious congeners) forms perhaps the central concern in Lyne's analysis of poetry. The return to avowedly or professedly personal poetry in period C now gives more emphasis to its literary forms and structures, and to intertextuality.
