Corinna dubitans : Rhetorics of Seduction and Failure in Ovid, Amores 1.11

Abstract

Amores 1.11 is a misguided poem of persuasion that fails rhetorically, first because the poet-speaker is persuading the wrong addressee, the slave Nape instead of the puella Corinna; and second, because the poet-speaker cannot sustain the pose of the affable lover needed to succeed in an erotic persuasion. Instead his tone with the slave becomes increasingly peremptory and spills over into his tone with the absent Corinna. Thus, the rhetoric of seduction becomes the rhetoric of failure because the poet-speaker allows the audience, and possibly Corinna herself, to see how and why she might refuse his invitation.