Lesbia, the poet, and the two faces of Sappho: ‘womanufacture’ in Catullus

Our understanding of ancient erotic poetry has, in my opinion, been greatly furthered in recent years by the shift from an approach which sees the poetic world of Roman love elegy as the creation of mimesis to one which reads it as semiosis. The elegiac poet portrays neither experienced reality nor conditions at least conceivable as such, but constructs a fictional situation using certain literary motifs provided by generic tradition, and thus challenges the reader to a game of semiotics. The latter, conversant with the ‘sign language’ of the motifs – for example of servitium amoris – will appreciate the poet's playful variations on a familiar theme and decipher the new meaning it has been given. Particularly significant here is, I find, the new perception of the two central characters in the elegiac world: the first-person poetalamator and his puella are both part of this fiction. The poet assumes the mask of an elegiac lover, playing the part as an actor would; he does not, then, re-enact his own experiences for an audience. In addition to this he designs the figure of the puella , who appears less as a character with its own personal profile and more as a typified representation, contrived in the main to reflect the poetic ego's thoughts. Women such as Cynthia, Delia, and Corinna are, to use Alison Sharrock's very apt definition, the product of ‘womanufacture’, and their names therefore cannot be read as pseudonyms for real-life women.