Elegy on the Threshold: Generic Self-Consciousness in Propertius 1.16

By including a paraclausithyron intended to mock the topos of the paraclausithyron, Propertius has made poem 1.16 a criticism of elegiac protocols and values. Yet the speaker of this poem, the door of the mistress' house, has its own problems, and the frame of the paraclausithyron not only introduces one putative view of erotic elegy and its value system but also destabilizes the moralizing position imputed to the door. Poem 1.16 undercuts the door's apparent assault on the poet-lover and suggests that readers are complicit in the very behavior which they are invited to turn up their noses at.