Festina Lente: Progress and Delay in Ovid's Fasti

Abstract

‘Wait a minute.’Martin Amis,Time's ArrowWe start with a stop. In recent years, long pause has been taken for inquest into the narrative dynamics of ancient literature. How stories are told, by whom, in what order—these have become key questions of narratology, a discipline whose tools most critics would now keepsomewherein their kit. Narratological criticism of poetry has ‘naturally’ drifted towards poems of long narrative span (i.e. hexameter epics). Recently, however, the ‘smaller’ genres have been extended the benefits of narratological civilisation, particularly in the realm of temporality. To take a loaded and leading example, Latin love elegy has been well serviced by narratology of late; what was once considered a genre ‘unfit’ for narrative, let alone narratological study, is now a prime setting for both. But it surprised me that the recent volumeLatin Elegy and Narratologyall but neglected Ovid's most ‘narrative’ elegy of all: theFasti. Such an editorial decision may have been motivated by the perception that theFastineeds no reclamation as a narrative poem; at any rate, the volume's interests lie in the processes of ‘fragmentation’, the way that elegy claims its own non-narrativity as alternative. Whatever the reasoning, I felt that theFasti'snear-relegation from this fascinating volume was something of an oversight. Many of the concerns emerging from the chapters on ‘other’ elegy can be usefully transferred to theFasti.