authorship Flashcards
(13 cards)
autonomy of the author in ars am
poetic ego not being directed by cupid but rather chooses to write elegy over epic - ovid appears in control
1.1 - rejects the guidance of poetic production (apollo and the muses) - states a type of revenge on cupid instead of- inciting incident is revenge rather than teaching or even erotics - god of love as the bull that bucks against ther poetic ego but ultimately succumbs to his authority y- conflict
the death of poetic succession in amores
amores 2.14: the killing of the baby ovid through Corinna’s abortion (the potential baby represents ovid) - catullus utilises language of procreation to talk about creating a poem
ovid is deprived through her abortion of the future of his poetic creativity or his position in the roman literary canon
female time and genre in the heroides
the epistolary medium reflects the nature of female time in latin poetry - it waits for a response in order to once again be permitted to act, at the mercy of response
contrast in phyllis and demophoon’s epitaph: use of the vocative translates to ‘you, who are to be inscribed’ - the artifice of masculine time, they will be committed to stone even when their actions are unheroic - inevitability consumes them also
defying narrative expectation in heroides 2
the entire poem pushes towards Phyllis dying on the cliff - as with sappho but also alluding to virgil’s dido through reference to catullus’ ariadne - phyllis looks to ariadne and theseus as a model for her mistake (but the ariadne that we encounter in the heroides is a work in progress perhaps the reason for her failure)
ultimately her hanging - which defies the direction oath poetic narrative only takes up a single line
in 79-80: she reduced demaphoon to his abandonment of her - in the same way he is a lesser theseus she is a lesser ariadne - she centres how she assisted him along the way and that all of his achievements stem from her intervention
reference to poison is a lower genre ending - does not achieve what ariadne does (in the canon of the heroides she hasn’t actually achieved it yet)
ariadne and allusion to drafting her letter
‘pressa’ used in heroides 10 to refer to the act of writing - implies she is writing in wax rather than papyri and thus this is not the letter she eventually sends
‘excitor’ at the end of line and picked up further down - panelepsis mimicking the catullan style - a proto-type to his version of her
ovid and poetic legacy in the tristia
recharacterises his former poetry and contextualises it within the poetic tradition to show presidency for all he writes
rewriting his own poetic history - poetic self-destruction
tristia 1.1 - the act of writing at sea
reference how his environment is impacting his ability to write, and that it is ruining his concentration - psychological damage of the journey but also reflected in the physical damage which the sea inflicts upon the quality of his work
yet his words manage to extend beyond the bounds of the storm - his recollection of former tranquility in his poetic composition is intact (kind of showing off his own greatness in adversity)
genre and the reader in the heroides
epistolic form has a presumed reader and an emobidied writer - places both ovid and the reader in the position of a poetic voyeur, stark departure from Ovid’s tendency to self assert or present a distinctive over-arching poetic ego
epistle is a distinctly roman medium - combination of this with elegiac meter (metre of lament) arranged in elegiac couplets (metre of love) - generates a strange chronology which alienates the female writers from their mythological and literary past (through their romanisation in the epistolic form) but simultaneously grounding them keenly within the moment of action in their famous stories (with the immediacy / first hand account of events in an epistle)
results in a suspended poetic landscape - enriched by the liminality of the shorelines many of the heroines rome (the shore as a natural purgatory)
elegiac world: closed system where pining and heartache can continue on indefinitely - sea represents the world at large threatening to intrude, bringing violence and bloodshed
intertextuality and Ariadne’s authorship in the heroides 10
in the fasti: ariadne is aware of catullus 64, actively references and even describes ‘remembering’ it
‘litore theseu’ is direct reference to catullus in the heroides - direct speech in catullus, in the heroides it is an echo (just as the heroides 10 is an ‘echo’ of catullus 64)
easy to assume that heroides 10 is after the events of catullus 64 given that she’s copying the words, attempting to assert her own voice over catullus’ - but what if it’s the other way around? heroides asks theseus to return, catullus 64 only denounces him after his departure
‘pressa’ to describe writing - wax tablet for drafting, combined with the fact the speech is less rhetorically effective/tragic (begging him to return rather than acceptance he is gone/ similarities in the catullus version with Medea’s speech in euripides’ play)
Oenone positioned in the elegiac poetic world in the heroides 5
she’s a river nymph - pastoral/idyllic
their marriage bed is described engendered in and intruded upon by natural forces - not within the polis, they spend time together in the countryside
unable to fashion paris beyond his time as a herdsman: utilises nature metaphors to insult Paris when he abandons her - ‘lighter than leaves, without the weight of sap’
poem closes on her powers of healing and failure to heal her love - echoing the idea of a cure for love ‘medicina’ which is taken from gallus - epitome of elegy
oenone’s attempts to escape the elegiac in heroides 5
writing in the roman epistle rather than describing herself ‘singing’ the events etc
styles helen instead of herself as the abandoned woman, offering herself as an alternative to this elegiac version of helen (even though how one fits more into the abandoned woman with a romantic rival type)
undermines the elegiac principle of beauty as the most important feature of the elegiac object (telling paris his judgement of the goddesses was incorrect) and consulting older men and women (advice from elders in epic / elegiac object cannot grow old)
Oenone’s elegiac scorn fashioned as a battlefield - the returning of paris brings violence (he returns but not for her - semi-elegiac) as the events of the iliad and trojan war begin to intrude - hector mentioned etc
expresses anxiety at the fate of the city (epic concern) - description as ‘nefas’ - her righteousness is not fitting for the elegiac genre
the return to elegiac imagery at the very end readers this attempt to change her generic role unsuccessful
uncertainty when referencing theseus - discomfort in the epic realm
generic convention and penelope in heroides 1
adheres to the elegiac, epistolic medium without sacrificing her epic features
by appealing to her empty marriage bed as a source of her sorrows and framing her pain in terms of her personal angst at separation from odysseus before introducing her fear of the suitors etc - maintains the elegiac tone
imagines the trojan conflict rather than playing any active role or interfering in the narrative like oenone - imagines the horrors, opening her emotional perspective with fears and complaints which humanise her epic persona
she escapes the elegiac shore through her imaginings not through trying to follow odysseus or bring him back - just her imagination
final line has a upturning note - odysseus’ impending return rather than her continued abandonment AND she is permitted to grow old, with her love still her love and in an uninsulting manner - epic - her faithfulness is rewarded
examples in the heroides when the physicality of the letter is referenced
heroides 1 - penelope sets up the premise of what the letter will be
heroides 3 - briseis discusses blots on her letter (ovid also does this in the tristia 1.4)
heroides 11 - eludes to the letter being stained with blood
