Identity crisis: scriptae personae in Ovid's Amores 1.4 and 2.5 (original) (raw)

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the multifaceted personae of Ovid's Amores, specifically in Amores 1.4 and 2.5. These personae range from Ovid as poet (poeta), lover (amator), and love teacher (praeceptor amoris); the poet's love interest, the puella; the rival, the vir; other unnamed rivals; and reader. I argue that Ovid complicates the roles of the personae in his poetry by means of subversion, inversion and amalgamation. Furthermore, I conclude that as readers, when we understand how these personae interact with each other and ourselves (as readers), we can better comprehend Ovid's poetry and quite possibly gain some insight into his other poetic works. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One. Introduction 1 Chapter Two. Personae in Amores 1.4 12 Chapter Three. Personae in Amores 2.5 36 Chapter Four. Conclusion 59 Bibliography 64 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ars adeo latet arte sua. Met. 10.252 In his book Arts of Love (1993), Kennedy discusses the Pygmalion myth in the tenth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses: 1 Pygmalion creates a statue; the story 'ends' with it becoming a 'real' woman. However, a sign 'stands' not for reality, but for another sign in a continuing chain of signification. A statue stands for the female body, but the female body is a signifier in its turn; and so on. It is the function and effect of rhetoric to efface itself, to dissolve the distinction between 'illusion' and 'reality' (ars adeo latet arte sua). The object of such rhetorical persuasion may be its exponent no less than its audience. Pygmalion's statue 'becomes' a 'real' woman; her 'reality' is beyond question because she 'represents' nothing beyond the fulfillment of his desire. The same concept of a realistic yet illusive kind of character can also be seen (or rather, read about) in Ovid's Amores. 2 As a result of these illusive, realistic characters-or what I prefer to call personae-, Ovid is often judged (or even criticized) 3 as deceptive, parodic, and witty. The focus of this thesis is how these characteristics function and what that function suggests about Ovid's poetry. My primary texts will be Amores 1.4 and 2.5, using thorough studies of personae in this 1 Specifically found in lines 243-297 of Met. 10. 2 I owe thanks to Tara Welch, Michael Shaw, and Pamela Gordon for their patience, profound insight, and supportive assessments that have helped make this thesis both comprehensible and knowledgeable. 3 Kennedy (1993) 93 makes a good point, which can be applied to Ovid's critics: "Elegy is thus no less artificial and rule-bound a literary genre than Virgil's Eclogues, the only difference being that the literary genre in elegy wear city clothes and live in Rome whereas the characters in the Eclogues wear rustic clothes and live in the country, a theme Veyne then goes on to develop in his chapter 7." Katz (2009) 2 explains that up until the 1970s, many scholars viewed Ovid as a mere imitator of his elegiac predecessors and thus considered his use of "parody" and constant irony and humor to be deficiencies. However, Katz (2009) 2 includes that many scholars today see Ovid's elegiac lover as "complex, humorous, and irreverent-as a true desultor amoris whom the poet portrays as both the lover dominated by his puella and the dominating lover who shrewdly manipulates his beloved." 145 And like when a Maeonian or Carian woman stains ivory with crimson to be a cheek piece for horses; And it lies in a treasure chamber, and though many horsemen pray to possess it; but, as a king's prize, it lies there, 87 Miller (2002) 257. 88 Booth (1991) 122. Booth also adds that "Roman thought lilies & roses 'went' together; see Plin. Nat. xxi. 22 et interpositum (lilium) etiam maxime rosas decet."