Ovid in Fiction

Abstract

This chapter examines the use of the Ovidian exile persona in the exile writing of the poet Théophile de Viau (1590–1626) and memoirist Bussy-Rabutin (1618–93). It explores how Ovid’s exile work, and particularly Tristia 2 (addressed to Augustus), establishes a paradigm for communication with the perpetrator of one’s disgrace, in what emerges as a complex gesture of plea and aggressive flattery. Both French writers were exiled for—among other things—their writing, and also, like Ovid, used writing to try to restore their reputation or reverse the sentence. In different ways, the gestures of comparison (initiated in Bussy’s case by his friend, Dominique Bouhours) are consolatory and self-aggrandizing; they also pose literary and political questions about censorship, the complex relationship between homme and œuvre and the relative power—in both the present and the future—of a monarch’s actions and writer’s words.