Leading scholars present the genre of Latin love elegy, its poets, features and influence on the history of Western literature.

Part I. History and Context: 1. Greek elegy Richard Hunter; 2. Latin precursors Federica Bessone; Part II. The Latin Love Elegists: 3. Caius Cornelius Gallus: 'the inventor of Latin love elegy' Emmanuelle Raymond; 4. Tibullus in first place (with Lygdamus) Parshia Lee-Stecum; 5. 'The woman' Mathilde Skoie; 6. Propertius Alison Keith; 7. Ovid the love elegist Thea S. Thorsen; Part III. The Elegiac World: 8. Time, place and political background Stephen J. Harrison; 9. The poeta-amator, nequitia and recusatio Alison Sharrock; 10. The puella: accept no substitutions! Paul Allen Miller; 11. Seruitium amoris: the interplay of dominance, gender and poetry Laurel Fulkerson; 12. Militia amoris: fighting in love's army Megan O. Drinkwater; Part IV. The Ends of Latin Love Elegy: 13. Loves and elegy Roy Gibson; 14. Latin love elegy and other genres Lisa Piazzi; 15. Breaking the rules: elegy, matrons and mime John F. Miller; Part V. Receptions: 16. Latin love elegy in late antiquity: Maximian Roger P. H. Green; 17. The love elegy in medieval Latin literature (pseudo-Ovidiana and Ovidian imitations) Marek Thue Kretschmer; 18. Renaissance Latin love elegy Luke B. T. Houghton; 19. English elegies of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Victoria Moul; 20. Translation and imitation of classical elegy in the French eighteenth century Stéphanie Loubère; 21. Russian elegists and Latin lovers in the long eighteenth century Andrew Kahn; 22. German elegies: from Baroque beginnings and classical culminations to twentieth-century Hollywood Theodore Ziolkowski; Part VI. Metre: 23. The Latin elegiac couplet Thea S. Thorsen.