Poetics in Exile: An Analysis of "Epistulae ex Ponto" 3.9

1982 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Block
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Daniel Jolowicz

Chapter 2 establishes Ovid’s Heroides, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto as central to a number of specific features of Chariton’s novel (especially the embedded letters). Section 2.2 focuses on the Heroides and the following epistolary motifs: the processes of composition and reception; the presence of tears; the recognition of handwriting; the role of memory and possessive adjectives; and the eroticization of the letter’s materiality. These contribute to the characterization of Chaereas and Dionysius as lamenting and abandoned heroines. Section 2.3 argues that Chariton has digested a number of motifs that characterize the exilic persona in Ovid’s Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, such as the role of finger rings and various psychosocial neuroses. As in Chapter 1, thematic proximities between Chariton and the elegiac corpus are supported by strikingly close points of verbal contact.


Author(s):  
Stephen Hinds

Born in 43 bce, Ovid first made his name at Rome as a playful and experimental love poet, in the Amores, the epistolary Heroides, and the didactic Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris; by about 2 ce, he was able to claim that “elegy owes as much to me as epic does to Virgil.” Concurrently with the epic Metamorphoses, he was at work (2–8 ce) on the elegiac Fasti, a poetical calendar of the Roman year, with one book devoted to each month; and he would spend his final decade further extending the range of elegy with the pleas and laments of the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, sent to Rome from afar, along with the curse-poetry of the Ibis. When Ovid turned in his forties to epic, he did not attempt direct competition with the already classic Aeneid. The 15-book Metamorphoses recounted dozens of tales from classical and Near Eastern myth and legend, with no central hero, but with characters and settings changing every few pages; every episode was in some way a story of supernatural transformation, and the whole took the ostensibly chronological form of a history of the universe. As the epic neared completion in 8 ce, the poet was suddenly banished by the emperor Augustus to the Black Sea frontier, (a) for the perceived immorality of the almost decade-old Ars Amatoria, and (b) for a still-mysterious error or indiscretion. Ovid languished in his place of exile, Tomis (modern Constantsa), until his death, probably in 17 ce.


2009 ◽  
pp. 194-206
Author(s):  
Luigi Galasso
Keyword(s):  

1982 ◽  
Vol 103 (2) ◽  
pp. 224
Author(s):  
S. Georgia Nugent ◽  
Betty Rose Nagle
Keyword(s):  

1965 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 37-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. J. Kenney

In the general revaluation of Ovid's poetry that began in earnest with the publication of Hermann Fränkel's book in 1945, and received a vigorous impetus from the celebrations attending the bimillenary of his birth in 1958, the poetry of his later years has not adequately shared. Even Mr Wilkinson's warm sympathies have not been moved to more than what, with great respect, I would call a somewhat perfunctory appraisal: for his chapter on the poems of exile, though not unjust, gives the reader no idea of how good some of the best of them are and—which perhaps is more important—why and how they are good. In a word, I do not believe that this poetry has yet been read with the critical attention that is its due, and a glance at the relevant pages of L'Année Philologique for the past thirty years or so reinforces this impression. Not that no opinions respecting it are on record. For instance, in the Preface to A. Scholte's edition of Book 1 of the Epistulae ex Ponto (Amersfurt, 1933) will be found a substantial section entitled ‘Iudicia de Epistulis ex Ponto’, in which are recorded the opinions of editors and readers ranging from Edward Gibbon to P. J. Enk. Such doxographies tend to recur in editions of classical writers: a recent example is to be found in Raoul Verdière's very disappointing edition of Grattius (Wetteren, [1964]). What value they have is not critical but historical—and also, indirectly, admonitory: for they ought to remind us of our obligation to read the poems for ourselves, looking for enlightenment not to the experience of previous readers but to our own experience in the light of the guidance provided by the poet.


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