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Ovid’s Ars Poetica : metapoetic didactic in the Ars Amatoria
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Giusti, Elena (2019) Ovid’s Ars Poetica : metapoetic didactic in the Ars Amatoria. In: Canevaro, Lilah Grace and O’Rourke, Donncha, (eds.) Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond : Knowledge, Power, Tradition. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. ISBN 9781910589793
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Abstract
The metapoetic nuances of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and its intertextual relations with the rest of the poet’s oeuvre have often been analysed alongside its explicitly didactic stance (Sharrock 1994, 2006). Similarly, the poem’s controversial relationship with the milestones of Latin didactic has been interpreted in the light of a playful mockery which further problematises its generic affiliation (see Sommariva 1980, Shulman 1981 on Lucretius’ DRN; Leach 1964 on Virgil’s Georgics).
The present chapter purports to demonstrate how some of the metapoetic moments of the Ars alter considerably its didactic message, bridging the gap between magister and pupil(s), and shifting the focus from ‘teaching how to love’ to ‘teaching how to write about (teaching how to) love’. Such passages move from explicit precepts on how to write love letters (1.435-84; 3.469-98) and love poetry (2.273-94; 3.319-48) to more subtle injunctions whose message changes when read under a metapoetic lens (e.g. how to write ‘Callimachean’ poetics with wine, 1.567-9; how to dissimulate your message, 1.485-92).
Some of these injunctions acquire further meaning when compared with similar precepts in Horace’s Ars Poetica (e.g. find a girl/a topic appropriate to your strengths, 2.502, AP 38-40; care about your/the poems’ appearance, 1.511-22, AP 291-4, 297-8; add ars to ingenium, 3.545-6, AP 408-11), another didactic poem which continuously eludes generic classification, and which has recently been singled out as an important model for both Ovid’s epic and exile poetry (Tamás 2014, Galasso 2014).
A reading of the Ars Amatoria vis-à-vis Horace’s Ars Poetica shall help us both in detecting further Ovid’s (meta)poetic message and in understanding the genre peculiarities of Ovid’s didactic project. Indeed, both works appear as highly self-referential poems which mock the didactic tradition via an ironic Kreuzung der Gattungen which endows the addressee with the power to engage in the author’s literary corpus: satire and iambics (Epodes) in Horace’s Ars Poetica; love elegy, and love letter writing (Heroides) in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria.
Item Type: | Book Item | ||||
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Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PA Classical philology | ||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Classics and Ancient History | ||||
Publisher: | Classical Press of Wales | ||||
Place of Publication: | Swansea | ||||
ISBN: | 9781910589793 | ||||
Book Title: | Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond : Knowledge, Power, Tradition | ||||
Editor: | Canevaro, Lilah Grace and O’Rourke, Donncha | ||||
Official Date: | 2019 | ||||
Dates: |
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Number of Pages: | 280 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 22 November 2017 | ||||
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