Ovid culture Flashcards
full name
Publius Ovidius Naso
born
to a wealthy equestrian family at Sulmo in 43 BC
died
17 AD
Amores
first poems - romantic elegies chronicling his affairs with Corinna, a playful fiction constructed on the model of Catullus’ Lesbia
Heroides
a collection of letters from famous literary heroines to their lovers or husbands
Medicamina Feciei Femineae
“Medicine for the female face” - sprightly poem on cosmetics
Ars Amatoria
“Art of love” - witty, occasionally risqué “manual of seduction” with two books of lessons for men and a third for women
Remedia Amoris
follow up handbook with advice, clever and sometimes quite sensible on how to disentangle oneself from the snares of love
Ovid
destroyer of poetry
the Tristia and the Epistuale ex Ponto
exile poetry
reason for getting exiled
a carmen and an error, carmen = Ars Amatoria, we don’t know what error is
The Fasti
a poetic calendar in elegiac couplets, survives only in the six books composed for the first six months of the year
The Metamorphoses
15 dactylic hexameter books weaved together with 250 tales of transformation, “a carmen perpetuum,” begins with the creation of the world out of Chaos - a quasi chronological series of myths of gods and men which culminates in the metamorphosis of Troy into Rome and Julius Caesar into a god and a fiery comet
tone
varies from grand to grotesque