Pop Music and Graeco-Roman Erotic Verse: Teaching Thorny Topoi in Lyric Ancient and Modern

Abstract

This paper discusses shared thematic ground between ancient erotic verse and modern Anglo-American popular music, and presents a “pop topos” assignment that asks students to illustrate ancient erotic topoi with modern popular music of their choosing, an activity the author has used successfully in an advanced Latin reading course on Roman elegy. By bringing familiar modern cultural artifacts into discourse with social and literary issues in ancient Greece and Rome, assignments such as the “pop topos” provide students an occasion for thinking about how Graeco-Roman literature can help inform the role of popular music in the ideological constructions of their own society.

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