Professor, Latin Poetry
Dean, Faculty of Humanities
BA Hons, MA (Queen’s), PhD (Ohio State)
Phone: 905 688 5550 x4562
Fax: 905 984 4859
Email: merriamc@brocku.ca
Winter 2025 Teaching
LATI 4P02/5V21: Epic, Didactic and Pastoral II / Vergil
My research interests are firmly fixed in Latin language and literature, and I focus specifically on the three e’s: Elegy, Epyllion, and Ecphrasis. I have published several articles and done conference presentations on Gallus, Sulpicia, Tibullus, Propertius, Vergil and Horace, and have published monographs on the epyllion and on propaganda in the Augustan elegists.
I am currently working on two major projects:
- Cornelius Gallus and the development of Latin elegy examines all the internal and witness evidence about the role Gallus played in creating the genre, and reaches some original conclusions;
- The urban setting and topography of Latin elegy looks at the city of Rome as the elegists saw it and showed it to their readers. What Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid show, and how they show it, connects directly to their views of Romanitas and Augustan morality.
I hold a PhD in Classics from The Ohio State University, preceded by BA (Honours) and MA from Queen’s University at Kingston. I am currently a Professor in the Department of Classics & Archaeology at Brock University, and serving a second five year term as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Brock.
“She Who Laughs Best: Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.279-290,” Latomus 70: 2010/2011: 405-421.
“Rewriting Grief: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Re-crafting of Ancient Poetry of Grief and Loss” Rewriting Text, Remaking Image (edd. L. Boldt-Irons, C. Federici, E. Virgulti) (Peter Lang Publishing 2010) 97-106.
“The Seductiveness of Deception: Ovid’s Advice to Lovers” Disguise, Deception, Trompe l’Oeil (edd. L. Boldt-Irons, C. Federici, E. Virgulti) (Peter Lang Publishing 2008) 21-40.
Edition of The Life of John Wilkes (collaboration with Dr. J. Sainsbury, Department of History) Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 6 (2008) 263-310.
“Sleeping Beauty: Propertius 1.3,” Beauty and the Abject: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (edd. L. Boldt-Irons, C. Federici, E. Virgulti) (Peter Lang Publishing, 2007) 253-266.
Love and Propaganda: Augustan Venus and the Latin Love Elegists (Brussels, Collections Latomus 2006).
“Sulpicia and the Art of Literary Allusion” chapter in Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Ellen Greene (University of Oklahoma Press, 2005) 158-168.
“Either With Us Or Against Us: The Parthian in Augustan Ideology” Scholia 13 (2005) 56-70.
“The Sights of Rome: The Einsiedeln Itinerary” (in collaboration with Dr. A. Jansen), Department of Classics Research Seminar Series, Brock University, November 2010.
“The Epyllion: Diverting and Subverting the Heroic” presented at The International Symposium Das Epyllion: Gattung ohne Geschichte?, University of Zurich, Switzerland, July 2009.
“Lusimus Satis: Catullus 61 and the Maturing of the Poet’s World,” Department of Classics Research Seminar Series, Brock University, March 2009.
“Rewriting Grief: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Re-crafting of Ancient Poetry of Grief and Loss,” Image and Imagery V: Re-Making, Re-writing, Re-discovery, Brock University,October 2008.
“Dishevelled and Dangerous: Mad Women and Social Convention in Ancient Poetry,” Madness Manifest: Creativity, Art and the Margins of Mental Health Symposium, Brock University, January 2008.
