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There are forms of enjoyment in Catullus that cannot be understood within the norms of pleasure as opposed to pain or unpleasure. This is an enjoyment that Freud would claim is beyond the pleasure principle, and thus integrally related to aggression, violence, and death: an enjoyment that is at once abject and sublime. Taking off from Mario Telò’s Archive Feelings, this paper examines these forms of enjoyment and how they function within the aesthetic structure of four poems by Catullus.

In the 7th century BCE, capanne of perishable materials appear to have been replaced by stone and terracotta-tiled buildings that many Etruscologists claim marks a changing society. Over the last century, subtler discussions of Etruscan participation in pan-Mediterranean elite culture have replaced explanations for architectural change that tout cultural colonization by ‘the Orient’. Despite focus on Etruscan agency, Etruscan adoption/adaptation of foreign building styles using ashlar masonry and, especially, terracotta tiling, are given as part of a trajectory of structural improvement. Yet, although certainly influenced by them, Etruscan architecture did not necessarily change because foreign styles were inherently superior. In many ways, traditional buildings were sufficient, if not better suited to their environment than foreign styles. Tradition tends to form a boundary against new styles–if a technique ain’t broke, then don’t fix it. So why did Etruscan builders decide to cross lines laid down by forebears and adopt new building styles? This paper examines the role of behaviour in creating the built environment, as well as what spurs builders to forsake tradition and innovate.

This article contends that there is a debate in postwar France about the nature of freedom. It argues that an important nexus of that debate can be seen by comparing Marguerite Yourcenar’s Mémoires d’Hadrien with the work of her contemporary, Simone de Beauvoir. It makes the supplementary argument that one can shine a more focused light on this dialogue by observing the way in which Yourcenar’s position anticipates the later arguments of Michel Foucault, Both Yourcenar and Foucault turn to antiquity as a way of strengthening their argument and relativizing the construction of the modern normative subject.