Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Catullan Obscenity And Modern English Translation, Tori Frances Lee

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the ways Catullus uses obscenity in his poetry, and how modern translators captures those effects when translating obscenity into English. I first define obscenity by creating four categories of words that all have to do with taboo topics and exist only in certain contexts, outside of polite company: obscenities, technical terms, circumlocutions, and euphemisms. The first chapter analyzes Poems 16, 37, and 97, Catullus's most obscene, to show that the poet uses profanity as a literary device that gains its strength from its juxtaposition with non-obscene words. The second chapter looks at seven English translations written post-1970 …