Paraklausithyron

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Paraclausithyron (Παρακλαυσιθυρον) is a motif in Greek and especially Augustan love elegy, as well as in troubadour poetry.

A translation of that term could be "beside (para) a locked(clausi) door (thyron). A paraklausithyron typically includes a lover (an exclusus amator) outside his mistress's door. Catullus (67) engages the door in dialogue; Horace offers a less-than-serious lament in Odes 3.10 and even threatens the door in 3.26; Tibullus (1.2) appeals to the door itself; in Propertius (1.16), the door is the sole speaker. In Ovid's Amores (1.6), the speaker claims he would gladly trade places with the door keeper, a slave who is shackled to his post, as he begs the door-keeper to allow him access to his mistress, Corinna. In the Metamorphoses, the famous wall (invide obstas) with its chink (vitium) that separates the star-crossed lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, seems to be an extension of this motif. The appeal of the paraclausithyron derives from its condensing of the situation of love elegy to the barest essentials: the lover, the beloved and the obstacle, allowing poets to ring variations on a basic theme.

The motif is not merely a historical phenomenon: it continues in contemporary songwriting. Steve Earle's song "More than I can Do," for example, gives a typical paraklausithyronic situation with such lines as "Just because you won't unlock your door /That don't mean you don't love me anymore."

[edit] References

Cairns, Francis. Generic composition in Greek and Roman poetry. Edinburgh, University Press, 1972.

Copley, Frank Olin. Exclusus amator: a study in Latin love poetry. Monographs of the American Philological Society no. 17. Madison, Wis., American Philological Association, 1956.

Cummings, Michael S. Observations on the development and code of pre-elegiac paraklausithuron. Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Ottawa, 1997. Summary in : DA 1997-1998 58 (10) : 3914A. Microform available from : University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor (Mich.), no. AAT NQ21961.

Walker, Janet A. "Conventions of Love Poetry in Japan and the West" The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Apr., 1979), pp. 31-65.