A Poet between Two Worlds: Ovid in Late Antiquity (original) (raw)
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Transformations of Ovid in Late Antiquity
Ovid could be considered the original poet of late antiquity. In his exile poetry, he depicts a world in which Rome has become a distant memory, a community accessible only through his imagination. This, Ovid claimed, was a transformation as remarkable as any he had recounted in his Metamorphoses. Ian Fielding's book shows how late antique Latin poets referred to Ovid's experiences of isolation and estrangement as they reflected on the profound social and cultural transformations taking place in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries AD. There are detailed new readings of texts by major figures such as Ausonius, Paulinus of Nola, Boethius and Venantius Fortunatus. For these authors, Fielding emphasizes, Ovid was not simply a stylistic model, but an important intellectual presence. Ovid's fortunes in late antiquity reveal that poetry, far from declining into irrelevance, remained a powerful mode of expression in this fascinating period. CONTENTS Introduction: a poet between two worlds 1. Ovid Recalled in the Poetic Correspondence of Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola 2. Ovid and the Transformation of the Late Roman World of Rutilius Namatianus 3. The Poet and the Vandal Prince: Ovidian Rhetoric in Dracontius' Satisfactio 4. The Remedies of Elegy in Ovid, Boethius and Maximianus 5. The Ovidian Heroine of Venantius Fortunatus, Appendix 1 Conclusion: Ovid's Late Antiquity.
OVID AND THE IDEAL OF DOCTA PUELLA IN THE ROMAN EROTIC ELEGY 1
The Roman Erotic Elegy is a topic that has been widely researched by scholars from areas related to Classical Studies. However, the researches usually concern on the poetic issue related to the elegiac genre, or they address to elegiac authors and their compositions. In this literary genre, especially when it comes to love poetry, the themes always relates to women, lovers and their moral behaviors and ideals, which arouses the curiosity of other women for this type of reading. What this love poetry can tell us about the education of women? In this sense, the objective of this study concerns to the erotic elegy and their possibility of contributing to the education of Roman women. Keywords Erotic Elegy, Ovid, Women's Education
In the modern popular imagination, the periods of the Late Roman Republic and Augustan Principate are extremely sexualized. The imagination conjures up orgies at Roman banquets, couples copulating around every corner, and hordes of prostitutes plying their wares on the streets. While it can be argued that these periods are sexually licentious, the image in our minds is probably hyperbolic. There may be some truth that it was a period of sexual openness. In her discussion on the texts from this period, Catherine Edwards writes: "Historians ancient and modern commonly depict the late republic as a period when sexual license flourished. This license is particularly associated with women of the senatorial elite, the wives, daughters, and sisters of Rome’s political leaders." Therefore, elite women enjoyed more sexual freedom than their predecessors or their poorer contemporaries. Poets, like Catullus, Horace, and Ovid, wrote explicit works about their sexual trysts with aristocratic matrons, courtesans, and prostitutes. Publius Ovidius Naso, or Ovid, was born in 43 B.C.E. He wrote for over forty years. He is best known for writing The Metamorphoses. However, his work encompasses many genres, including but not limited to: love elegy, tragedy, heroic, and lamentation elegy. For this project, I discuss Ovid’s treatment of women in his amatory works: The Loves (three books), The Art of Love (three books plus The Art of Beauty), and the Heroines (fifteen letters). Through these works, I will show that Ovid’s depiction of women is gendered. Ovid’s depiction of women cannot be considered a historically accurate portrayal of the lives of women during the Augustan Principate. While autobiographical in tone, Ovid writes to entertain his audience. Therefore, his work is literary rather than historical. This fact does not negate the importance of his work to ancient historians and classicists. His depictions provide us with insight into the social world of his time. For example, his women characters join their men at dinner parties, the theatre, and the gladiatorial shows. His descriptions point to a historical period where women participated in the social entertainments of the city. Ovid is one of the first ancient male writers who give women a voice in literature. Feminists have a difficult time with assessing whether ancient male writers, like Ovid, contribute to misogyny or highlight its unfairness. I particularly like Dorothea Wender’s definition of the word feminist: “When I say “feminist,” I mean a man or woman who believes that women should be given a “better” place in society (legally, politically, professionally, etc.) or one which more closely approximates that held by men of the same class.” Based on this definition, Ovid is not a proto-feminist. He is a humorist, often employing the comedic devices of irony and exaggeration. While he portrays women in a sexist way, it is entirely plausible that he writes in this manner for comedic effect. Although Ovid is often sympathetic to women, his amatory works remain part of the patriarchal literature since he portrays his female characters from a masculine perspective in three ways: (1) women assume the traditional Roman male role in romantic affairs; (2) the female heroines are caricatures of the worst female traits; and (3) the female lovers behave more as courtesans than matrons.
Latin Elegy and Narratology. Fragments of Story, P. SALZMAN MITCHELL-G. LIVELEY (edd), 2008
Telling Times Chronological Segmentation in Ovid's Tristia C h a p t e r 3 Eleonora tola 49 < O vid's two collections of exilic texts have been rehabilitated by scholarship in the last four decades. Since this resurgence of interest, the Tristia and the Epistulae ex Ponto are studied as innovative Ovidian productions from various perspectives whose common axis is, generally, the overcoming of a dominant autobiographical reading. They are particularly examined in relation to various aspects of their poetic construction. Scholars also stress their connection with the rest of the Ovidian literary writings as well as with the elegiac genre. Nevertheless, these collections are not often approached from a narratological perspective, since, like other texts belonging to the same genre, they don't seem to display the characteristics of what, traditionally, scholarship considers a "story." In fact, although many stories can be found throughout Latin elegiac texts, they often interact with other nonnarrative aspects. In the particular case of the Tristia and the Epistulae. Ripert (9), Fränkel (945), Lee (949), Wilkinson (955). Fränkel (945) and Wilkinson (955) had already recognized the literary values of these Ovidian texts, despite their criticisms as to some of their aspects.. In 965, Kenney considered the Ovidian exilic collections as "poetic experiments" and demonstrated their literary merits. This was also Viarre's approach (976). Nagle (980) suggests, for the Tristia and the Epistulae ex Ponto, a reading that focalizes the poetics of exile and tries to point out its mechanisms. This author examines precisely the relations between this poetry and the genre of Roman love elegy, from lexical and thematic repetitions that link the dolor exilii to the dolor amoris. Previously, Rahn (958) had drawn attention to the continuity between the last Ovidian collections and the poet's earlier works. More recently, Videau (99) has pointed at the construction of a narratological poetics inscribed in the situation of rupture provoked by exile. I have examined the Ovidian exilic texts (Tola 004) focusing on the notion of "poetic metamorphosis," intending to highlight the specific poetics of Ovid's last literary production.. The story of Tibullus' relationship with Delia, of Propertius' affair with Cynthia, etc.
The Love Elegy in Medieval Latin Literature (Pseudo-Ovidiana and Ovidian Imitations)
Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy, 2013
1 Alcuin, letter 43 to Charlemagne; PL 100,col.208. All translations are mine. 2 Brinkmann (1979) passim. 3 Beissner (1965) 24-45. 4 Etymologiae 1.39.14: Elegiacus autem dictus eo, quod modulatio eiusdem carminis conueniat miseris Lindsay (1911) 78. marek thue kretschmer whereas the poems of Propertius and Tibullus were, with very few exceptions, unknown to the medieval men -and occasional women -of letters. However, this Ovidian literary activity was a local phenomenon limited to northern and central France and especially to the Loire Valley. 7 The cathedral school of Orléans 8 was the most important centre for the revival of Ovid and other Roman classics. In the heyday of the so-called Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 9 one of the Orléans teachers, Matthew of Vendôme, redefined elegy as the literary genre of love poetry. In his Ars uersificatoria (ca.1170), a guide to poetics, he opens the second book with a personification of the different forms of poetry. Inspired by Ovid, Boethius and Martianus Capella, he describes his nightly vision of a vernal appearance of Lady Philosophy accompanied by the four maidens Tragedy, Satire, Comedy and Quarta pharetratos Elegia cantat amores (cf. Rem. am. 379) fauorali supercilio, oculo quasi uocatiuo, fronte expositiva petulantiae, cuius labella prodiga saporis ad oscula uidentur suspirare; quae ultima procedens non ex indignitate, sed potius ex inaequalitate pedum: tamen in effectu iocunditatis staturae claudicantis uindicat detrimentum, iuxta illud Ouidii: