Epithalamia (1613) Epithalamia sive Lusus Palatini in Nuptias ...
(1612) EPITHALAMIA or Nuptiall Poems upon the Most Blessed and Happie Marriage between ...
of Herrick's
epithalamia. If Herrick poetically "destabilizes" a
(10) Though the court was Christian,
epithalamia featuring intervention by Venus and Cupid were accepted and indeed conventional; see Cameron 1970, 194.
Epithalamia of Catullus provided the models for Spenser's work, with celebration of the marriage of gods and heroes on Olympus in Catullus 64, and the marriage of real humans in Catullus 61.
This gendered tension between reluctant women and a male impresario becomes most overt in the
epithalamia celebrating the weddings of Sir Clipseby Crew and Sir Thomas Southwell.
In Catullus's
epithalamia 61 and 62, marriage surfaces as a necessary condition for the fulfillment of the gender roles of a young man and woman; within the framework of marriage, Roman men and women are able to embody the values of amor, tides, and pietas, the culmination of which is to provide legitimate citizens for Rome (61.204-23).
Epithalamia were delivered at banquets and sometimes in or in front of churches.
Apart from drawing relations between both texts, Czapla lucidly identifies the references to
epithalamia and other genres of classical antiquity and discusses the function of those references.
With the exception of the
epithalamia and a few other texts, praise of love was restricted to the love elegy, where, however, the poet dealt with his love for his mistress, not for his wife.
[28] Moreover, Catullus 64, as one of the exemplary
epithalamia Antiquity wills to the Renaissance, proves to be especially consonant with the thematic contents of "Sur des vers de Virgile," a text concerned for major stretches with the sexual, moral, and social aspects of marriage.
Besides the chapter on drama, the longest treats
epithalamia (100), but most of the others deal with praise genres.
