Latin Love Elegy Research Articles

“Where do these warrish hands and heart of Venus come from?” Statius’ subversion of Ovidian militia amoris in the Thebaid

Statius’ Thebaid has long been recognized as a highly allusive epic, but one system of its allusions— that which engages with Latin love elegy—has received less study than others. To address this oversight, I argue in this article that Statius makes marked references to techniques and tropes of Ovidian elegy in his use of love language throughout the Thebaid. After cataloguing a range of the epic’s Ovidian elegiac intertexts, I argue that Statius sustains an allusion to Amores book one in Thebaid book five. In Thebaid book five, Hypsipyle provides an inset narrative of Venus’ intervention in Lemnos: under the influence of the spurned love goddess, the Lemnian women slaughter the entire male population. In my reading, Hypsipyle’s narrative represents a characteristically Statian subversion of his literary models. In book one of the Amores, Ovid develops the ‘warfare of love’ (militia amoris) trope as a tongue-in-cheek revision of both previous epicists’ and elegists’ more morose and austere poetics. Statius, conversely, recasts the light and humorous elements of Ovid’s militia amoris into his own aesthetic mould, whereby love becomes as horrifying and destructive a force as war in the cosmos of the Thebaid. That is, Statius mirrors Ovid’s own techniques of subversive allusion to mark his poetics also as both indebted to and an innovating of elegiac precursors. But in Statius’ case, the world of elegaic amor becomes graver rather than lighter, more severe than humorous. In sum, Statius’ subversive allusions to Ovidian elegy in his Thebaid, particularly in book five, transform Ovid’s levis love (Am. 3.1.41) into its most monstrous counterpart.

Law and Love in Ovid: Courting Justice in the Age of Augustus by Ioannis Ziogas

Reviewed by: Law and Love in Ovid: Courting Justice in the Age of Augustus by Ioannis Ziogas Teresa Ramsby Law and Love in Ovid: Courting Justice in the Age of Augustus. By Ioannis Ziogas. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xiii + 420. Hardback, $115.00. ISBN: 9780198845140. The presence of legal and forensic rhetoric in Ovid’s many works has long been a subject of interest among scholars. In his recent monograph, Ioannis Ziogas dials up the significance of these aspects of Ovid’s poetic style by claiming that they are not merely reflective of Ovid’s legal training, as described in his autobiographical poems. Ziogas also rejects the notion that Ovid is simply being playful with legal terms within the sportive and culturally parodic context of elegiac love poetry. Rather, Ziogas asserts that Ovid is purposefully and provocatively building towers of poetic and legal structures on two important foundations, the first being the concept of sovereign exceptionalism that culminates in Augustus who, for the first time in Roman political history, stood alone, outside the law, [End Page 484] while making the laws (as princeps). The second foundation is the forensic language of prior poets (Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius) who had already explored the idea of the amator as living outside the Roman system and who thus created terminologies to define that existence, with words and phrases that we are well familiar with, such as servitium amoris, militia amoris, otiosus and exclusus. Ovid’s legal structures of language and those of Latin love elegy in general, Ziogas explains, anticipate “the juridico-political milieu of the Principate” (55), so that “the sacrosanctity of the poet and that of the prince exist in parallel, if not in tension” (57). Ovid far surpassed his predecessors in his application of these precarious poetics, and, as we know, the tension he created did not resolve peacefully for him. In the introductory first chapter, Ziogas provides the theoretical basis of this interpretation, relying heavily on the work of Giorgio Agamben, whose notions of the homo sacer and the sovereign exception have been influential in philosophy, sociology, political science and ancient world studies. Ziogas discusses the creation of Augustus’s tribunician and sacrosanct status, as developed by Verrius Flaccus (and cited in Pompeius Festus centuries later), as bearing great similarity to Agamben’s homo sacer who lives a “bare life” outside the juridical order – a place of vulnerability for most, but a supremely protected and powerful place for Augustus. Ziogas summons many elegiac examples to make a compelling case for the idea of the elegiac amator as a man outside the law – governed not by the compelling cultural forces that shape the Roman man, but by the laws and legal environments he creates within his poems. The remaining seven chapters are divided into three sections and the work concludes with an epilogue. Part I: The Trials of Love (Chapters 2–4), develops the Ovidian amator as homo sacer, established primarily through recusatio, where forensic arguments are deployed through these acts of rejection, placing the poet in a position of enacting and empowering whichever pleasure principle he chooses to pursue. This ability is compared to the power of the princeps who is not constrained by any external force to pursue (or dismantle) the legal code of Rome. Ziogas then examines the courtroom dramas that unfold in the Amores (particularly 2.7, 2.19 and 3.4), whereby Ovid makes “free love the absolute basis of legality” and “defines a private zone that lies outside the juridical order” (141). In Chapter 4, Ziogas demonstrates how the paired epistles written by Acontius and Cydippe (Heroides 20 and 21) complicate “the issue of intention in the enactment of contracts and in falling in love,” (198), a poetic innovation that points to “the rise of epistolography in imperial adjudication” (199). [End Page 485] In Part II: Lex Amatoria (Chapters 5–6), Ziogas charts the “continuity of didactic and elegiac traditions from Hesiod to Ovid” (203) in his exploration of Ovid’s defense of his work in the Ars amatoria and its overt opposition to Augustus’s marital laws. He draws fruitful comparisons between Ovid’s didactic works and those...

Erotic Magic, Elegy, and Iambic in Horace’s Epodes

This paper explores Horace’s engagement with Latin love elegy through the motif of magic in Epodes 5 and 17. I argue that Horace’s Canidia and the elegiac puellae are constructed in tandem as part of an ongoing dialogue between Horace’s Epodes and early love elegy. Horace literalises the elegiac lovers’ metaphorical characterisation of their mistress’ beauty as magically enchanting to construct Canidia as a witch who controls her lovers with erotic magic. Through Canidia and the theme of magic in the Epodes, Horace uses elegy to define his iambic poetics and to demonstrate that love elegy is central to his development of the Roman iambic tradition.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Love Motifs in Prudentius

AbstractBy analysing three paradigmatic passages, this paper explores how Prudentius uses classical love motifs and imagery not only to lambast paganism, but also as a powerful rhetorical tool to convey his Christian message. The ‘fire of love’ imagery is conspicuous inPsychomachia53–57, which wittily blends Christian and erotic language. In an entirely different context (C. Symm.2.1071–1085), theflamma amorisis also fully exploited to depict lustful young Vestal Virgins, in combination with other classical metaphors of passion, such as the ‘wound of love’ and thesigna amoris. Additionally, the contrast between heat and cold is a central element in the description of the Vestals’ tardy nuptials, redolent of classical satirical portraits ofvetulae libidinosae. Finally, inHamartigenia628–636 the relationship between the soul and God draws from a Christian tradition of bridal (and coital) representation, but the lapse into sin is portrayed as the love triangle, typical of the Latin love elegy. These examples illustrate how Prudentius creatively and consciously frames love and sex imagery in new contexts, exploring their potential and infusing clichés with new meanings and forms.

O Ego Non Felix: Inachia, Lesbia, and Horace's Epodes

This paper explores Horace's relationship with neoteric poetry in the context of Epodes 11 and 12 as signaled by Horace's use of meaningful names. Epode 11 focuses on Latin love elegy, but Epode 12 engages broadly with neoteric poetics through names associated with and references to that earlier poetry. This includes an adaptation of the lament from Calvus' Io. Horace creates a portrait of the mulier in Epode 12 that stands in contrast to the ideal neoteric woman. Horace's sexual failure with her dramatizes the poet's relationship with iambic invective, of which she is an allegorical representation.

‘Ovid was there, and with him were Catullus, Propertius and Tibullus’: Catullus and the shaping of early Tudor love poetry

ABSTRACTThis essay suggests that Petrarch's canzoniere, rather than being an originator of a mode of literary erotics, is a reception and mediator of classical Latin love elegy. Taking its starting point from Catullus’ searing erotic poems written to and about Lesbia, it investigates the evidence for reading Catullus as a source for Renaissance literary love, and considers the ways in which Catullan erotics shape the poetics of love in early sixteenth-century England. The first section clarifies Latin elegy's defining tropes and maps these onto Renaissance erotics. The essay then traces the transmission of Catullus to the Renaissance and the ways in which he was received by readers, commentators and writers. The generally-accepted position on Catullus in England is that Philip Sidney was the first to translate one of his poems into English, but this paper offers pressing evidence that Catullus had a hitherto underexplored position at the Henrician court. A close reading of Wyatt's ‘Whoso List to Hunt’ considers how framing this text with Catullus rather than just Petrarch reveals the complex intertextual dialogues in the poem. As well as elucidating an alternative model for Wyatt's erotics, the readings here provide a case-study in Wyatt's practice of imitatio.

Amores I.1: Amores'in İzdüşümü

Romalı ünlü elegeia ozanı Ovidius'un yirmili yaşlarının başlarında yazdığı ilk yapıtı Amores, üç kitapçık ve aşk elegeia'sı türünde yazılmış 49 şiirden oluşur. Bu türde yapıtlar veren Gallus, Tibullus ve Propertius'tan sonra dördüncü ve son sırada gelen Ovidius'la birlikte aşk elegeia'sı da en parlak dönemini görerek son bulur. Amores'in ilk şiiri, yapıtın tamamının genel özelliklerini barındırır. Bu bağlamda şiirde altı öge tespit edilmiştir. (Hellenistik Dönem Şiirinin etkisi, retorik ögeler içermesi, komik dil, durum ve mantık üzerine kurulmuş espriler bulunması, inanç ve mitolojinin kullanılma biçimi, Ovidius'un ozan kimliği ve sanatına verdiği değeri göstermesi ve de âşık ozan karakterini yansıtması). Bu çalışmada her bir öge, kısaca tanıtıldıktan sonra Amores'in ilk şiiri ve yapıtın tamamında Ovidius'un tutumu örneklerle açıklanacaktır. Bu sayede ilk şiirin Amores'in genel yapısını nasıl yansıttığı gösterilecektir.

El ethos elegíaco de Tomás Rodaja en la “Novela del licenciado Vidriera”

This article begins by examining the military and colorful parrot-like outfit that Tomás Rodaja wears before he departs for Italy and connects it with the classical literary practice among Roman elegiac poets that uses birds as symbols of allusion to past poets. In this sense, Cervantes adopts the imitative ability of the parrot in order to camouflage some scenes of the novela before the major transformation of Rodaja into glass. In so doing, Cervantes creates various situations that contain elements of Latin love elegy. If Rodaja's experiences are interpreted with this poetic genre in mind, he resembles Ovid during his early career as a poet of love elegies. In sum, in the beginning of the novela, Rodaja embodies the figure of Ovid during his initial steps into the poetic tradition of the Latin love elegy.

<em>Caput mundi</em>: Female Hair as Symbolic Vehicle of Domination in Ovidian Love Elegy

This paper suggests some far-reaching symbolic implications for women's hair in Latin love elegy. Hairdressing, hairdressers and hair loss provided a metaphorical vehicle by which Tibullus (1.8), Propertius (2.18), and above all Ovid (Ars Amatoria 3; Amores 1.11–12, 2.7–8, 1.7, and 1.14) interrogate the power relationships that underpin Roman society: between master and slave, women and men, Rome and her provinces. In my analysis, elegiac hair becomes an index to the socioeconomic realities of urban self-fashioning as well as a locus of anxiety about Rome's increasing reliance on imported labor and consumer goods.

Properzio nell’epicedio ovidiano per Tibullo: Ov. Amor. 3.9 e il dialogo con l’elegia d’amore

In his epicedion on the death of Tibullus, Amor. 3.9, Ovid engages in a dialogue not only with the obvious model of Tibullan poetry, but also with Propertius. He chooses Prop. 2.13b, which contains a foreshadowing of Propertius’ death and burial in the broadest terms. In this way Ovid reflects on important themes like death, burial, the underworld and literary glory, assuming a different point of view from those of his elegiac predecessors. Of great importance in this poetic dialogue is the figure of Venus, whom Ovid presents in a very different way from Tibullus and Propertius. In this perspective Amor. 3.9 amounts to a reconsideration by Ovid of pivotal topics in the tradition of Latin love elegy.

El ethos elegíaco de Tomás Rodaja en la "Novela del licenciado Vidriera"

This article begins by examining the military and colorful parrot-like outfit that Tomás Rodaja wears before he departs for Italy and connects it with the classical literary practice among Roman elegiac poets that uses birds as symbols of allusion to past poets. In this sense, Cervantes adopts the imitative ability of the parrot in order to camouflage some scenes of the novela before the major transformation of Rodaja into glass. In so doing, Cervantes creates various situations that contain elements of Latin love elegy. If Rodaja's experiences are interpreted with this poetic genre in mind, he resembles Ovid during his early career as a poet of love elegies. In sum, in the beginning of the novela, Rodaja embodies the figure of Ovid during his initial steps into the poetic tradition of the Latin love elegy.

Measuring and Mapping Intergeneric Allusion in Latin Poetry using Tesserae

Most intertextuality in classical poetry is unmarked, that is, it lacks objective signposts to make readers aware of the presence of references to existing texts. Intergeneric relationships can pose a particular problem as scholarship has long privileged intertextual relationships between works of the same genre. This paper treats the influence of Latin love elegy on Lucan’s epic poem, Bellum Civile, by looking at two features of unmarked intertextuality: frequency and distribution. I use the Tesserae project to generate a dataset of potential intertexts between Lucan’s epic and the elegies of Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid, which are then aggregrated and mapped in Lucan’s text. This study draws two conclusions: 1. measurement of intertextual frequency shows that the elegists contribute fewer intertexts than, for example, another epic poem (Virgil’s Aeneid), though far more than the scholarly record on elegiac influence in Lucan would suggest; and 2. mapping the distribution of intertexts confirms previous scholarship on the influence of elegy on the Bellum Civile by showing concentrations of matches, for example, in Pompey and Cornelia’s meeting before Pharsalus (5.722-815) or during the affair between Caesar and Cleopatra (10.53-106). By looking at both frequency and proportion, we can demonstrate systematically the generic enrichment of Lucan’s Bellum Civile with respect to Latin love elegy.

Epic as Elegy

This article contributes to the discussion on the significance of the Latin Love Elegy, with regard to its language, themes and conventions, as a means of generic innovation in Valerius Flaccus’Argonautica. In particular, it will be demonstrated that in the scenes of lament and separation that take place in books 2 and 3, Valerius incorporates a selection of elegiac themes and motifs to enhance the effect and sensationalism of these episodes as well as the pathos in the rhetoric of his female protagonists (in particular the Lemnian wives and Hypsipyle as well as Clite, the wife of king Cyzicus). At the same time he will be seen to take a step further by inverting and/or refashioning some of these topoi and tropes so as to leave his own metapoetic comment on his negotiations with other genres in theArgonautica.

Caput mundi: Female Hair as Symbolic Vehicle of Domination in Ovidian Love Elegy

This paper suggests some far-reaching symbolic implications for women's hair in Latin love elegy. Hairdressing, hairdressers and hair loss provided a metaphorical vehicle by which Tibullus (1.8), Propertius (2.18), and above all Ovid (Ars Amatoria 3; Amores 1.11–12, 2.7–8, 1.7, and 1.14) interrogate the power relationships that underpin Roman society: between master and slave, women and men, Rome and her provinces. In my analysis, elegiac hair becomes an index to the socioeconomic realities of urban self-fashioning as well as a locus of anxiety about Rome's increasing reliance on imported labor and consumer goods.

The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy, written by Thea S. Thorsen

The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy, written by Thea S. Thorsen

Louise Labé : sodalité expansive et individualité singulière, la formation d’une autorité poétique (féminine)

Considering the dominant concepts of achieving poetic authority in the Early Modern period, the following paper attempts to enlighten the position of the most famous female Petrarchist in France, Louise Labe. In order to obtain glory and success in the poetic agon of imitation, early modern poets aim to stage themselves ostentatiously as author-figures in their texts, whilst relying on a powerful and singular image of themselves on one hand and on a social and cultural contextualization on the other hand. These two functional dispositifs, to be called “singularisation” and “sodalisation”, are basically found in Labe’s poetic oeuvre. She presents herself both as an exceptionally affected loving woman, recurring to the literary topics of Latin love elegy and the features of Italian female Petrarchism and in the mean time she endeavours to be the leading authority within an extensive community, consisting not only of the other women but also of the cultural nobility in general. The exceptional prominence of inner passion in Labe’s work finally reaches beyond literary traditions and exploits the terrain of a nearly modern form of psychic individuality which might be the key to her long lasting success and glory.

The Translatio of Memory and Desire in The Legend of Good Women : Chaucer and the Vernacular Heroides

The Translatio of Memory and Desire in The Legend of Good Women: Chaucer and the Vernacular Heroides Marilynn R. Desmond What impels me to write to you all the time? . . . at every moment the order to write to you is given, no matter what, but to write to you, and I love, and this is how I recognize that I love. Jacques Derrida, “Envois,” The Post Card Word for word, if you like, syllable for syllable. From the moment this economic equivalence—strictly impossible, by the way—is renounced, everything can be translated, but in a loose translation, in the loose sense of the word “translation.” . . . In a sense, nothing is untranslatable; but in another sense, everything is untranslatable; translation is another name for the impossible. Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other1 I As a meditation on epistolarity and desire, Jacques Derrida’s The Post Card explores the psychic structures that are established and maintained by the textuality of love letters: according to the conceit of The Post Card, the missives collected therein originated as Derrida’s private correspondence. Despite their publication and their [End Page 179] status as literary letters, the amatory epistles in The Post Card retain a raw and compelling urgency that is the hallmark of epistolary discourse in the face of thwarted desire. The Post Card thus illustrates how the literary love letter interpellates its audience in the rhetoric of desire so that the implied reader stands in for the addressee. As a result, the literary love letter—even the most obviously fictive—seems authentic to its readers. Ovid’s Heroides represent the most ancient example of a collection of literary love letters; like Derrida’s postcards, the Heroides invite the reader to participate in the circulation of desire. The first fifteen Heroides (the “single letters”) are addressed by women to their absent male lovers, whether they are unfaithful, unattainable, or simply lost. Heroides 16–21, known as the “double letters,” purport to record an epistolary exchange between three pairs of star-crossed lovers—Paris and Helen, Hero and Leander, Acontius and Cydippe. The three male letter-writers of these double letters adopt a language of subjugation similar to their female interlocutors so that their discourse is marked by desire rather than gender. In the single letters, each speaker identifies herself as an abandoned woman at the start the poem,2 and each letter rehearses the memory of love and catalogues the broken promises of the lover, a reiteration of memory and desire explicitly intended to bring about the return of the lover. The Heroides thus conflate erotic desire and epistolarity so that the act of composing a letter enacts the desire of the letter-writer, and the letter itself substitutes for physical contact with the beloved. The fictional writers of each letter are well-known characters from ancient texts;3 in addition, the tragic ending of each love affair is always already known: Laodamia, Phyllis, Dido, Canace, and Hero commit suicide; while Oënone, Ariadne, Hypsipyle, and Hermione are abandoned to their fates.4 Each of these heroines [End Page 180] either kills herself or declares that she wishes to die. According to ancient textual traditions, all of the women in Heroides 1–15 except for Penelope and Jason’s two lovers—Medea and Hypsipyle—eventually die for love,5 so that these epistles commemorate death as the constitutive category for female desire.6 In Derridean terms, these are letters that fail to arrive at their destinations: of all these absent heroes, only Odysseus actually returns to resume married life with Penelope (Heroides, 1), and only after a prolonged absence. In addition, the discourse of desire in the Heroides is inherently transgressive. The language of desire in Roman poetry developed from the Latin love elegy, so that the linguistic register of the Heroides belongs to the meretrix—the courtesan who was drawn from the ranks of the freedwomen. Neither slave nor matron, prostitute nor wife, the meretrix could express forms of desire that would be inappropriate for a married woman, who was expected to be moderate and circumspect.7 While the women in the Heroides claim to be married or betrothed to their...

UM CONCEITO DE EQUIVALÊNCIA NA EXPRESSÃO VERNÁCULA DA POESIA LATINA

Taking Joseph Brodsky’s concept of “equivalence” as far as translating foreign poems intoliterary forms plausible to the translator’s mother tongue and culture, this paper offers a possibleapplication of that concept to the latin love elegy lesser constituent unit, the elegiac couplet, and on theprosodic elements peculiar to the metres which it is made up of: the hexametre and the pentametre. Theintention here is to study the poetic nature of the latin love elegy, through the latin linguistic systemcharacteristics which provide the very basis for its metrical poetic system. That posture has driven us toa revaluation of the latin metric system through the prism of linguistic investigation, on all thatconcerns at least the elegiac couplet and its prosodic specificities, what has allowed to uncover anentire new range of possibilities to reading elegiac expressivity, as it was attempted to show with oneexemple taken from the roman elegiac poet Tibullus, from the century I b. C.

Intertextual and Intercultural Dynamics between Roman Comedy and Latin Love Elegy

Intertextual and Intercultural Dynamics between Roman Comedy and Latin Love Elegy