OVID SCHOLARS

Question 1

male author’s

Answer 1

appropriation of the feminine voice’ – Elizabeth Harvey

Question 2

The advice for women

Answer 2

in Ars 3 is ‘mainly for male benefit’ – Steven Green

Question 3

‘Plato and Ovid agree love

Answer 3

is a cultural construct but Ovid says sex is a natural thing.’ – Katharina Volk

Question 4

Ovid is not simply a prankster

Answer 4

and his concern is not only with literature but with life’ – Jenkyns

Question 5

Ovid celebrates modern

Answer 5

Rome as the golden age – Volk / Jenkyns

Question 6

Reader is encouraged

Answer 6

not to take anything the poet says too seriously – Fitzgerald

Question 7

Argues that the ‘didactic voice’

Answer 7

can be seen as the voice of the ‘bogus teacher’ – Lindsay Watson

Question 8

‘Ovid is sympathetic

Answer 8

to women’ – Alison Sharrock

Question 9

‘perception of women seems to change

Answer 9

– they are not entirely passive as there are parts where he gives them a more active role’ – Christopher Brunelle

Question 10

‘his personal preferences

Answer 10

suggest that the Ars is for himself’ – Christopher Brunelle

Question 11

‘Critics have repeatedly

Answer 11

felt that the poem lack sincerity.’ – Bishop

Question 12

‘The Ars Amatoria is

Answer 12

about lust rather than love.’ – Bishop

Question 13

‘Pleasing the opposite sex

Answer 13

is one of the central skills to the art of love.’ – Gibson

Question 14

‘Ovid’s view of human relationships

Answer 14

is nothing if not pragmatic.’ – Gibson

Question 15

‘Ovid isn’t writing

Answer 15

to women, he’s mocking them.’ – Hall

Question 16

‘Ovid’s tone alternates

Answer 16

between description and prescription, and an audience whose identity is never entirely stable.’ - Brunelle

Question 17

The story of Procris and Cephalus

Answer 17

reinforces the double standards of Roman sexuality - the man gets away with it and the woman is punished. - Green

Question 18

an Anti-Augustan poem

Answer 18

according to the Lex Julia, women caught in adultery could no longer wear the stola of an respectable Roman woman. They were forced to wear a toga traditionally worn by men and prostitutes.
telling women how to dress and do their hair is rejecting the Augustan polarisation of women as either respectable matrons or prostitutes.
- Gibson

Question 19

the Ars is a poem that sometimes

Answer 19

implicitly and sometimes explicitly criticises Augustan moral reform
- Sharrock

Question 20

a stylised assault

Answer 20

on the whole marital condition
- Green

Question 21

Ovid’s precepts are presented

Answer 21

with the advantage of male lover in mind
- Watson

Question 22

common assumption that women

Answer 22

in their natural state are unpalatable to men
- Green

Question 23

Ovid deflates epic by presenting

Answer 23

mythical heroines as mere causes of erotic disappointment
- Gibson

Question 24

his intent is

Answer 24

entirely disingenuous
- Gibson

Question 25

anti-feminist

Answer 25

humour pervades the poem
- Leach

Question 26

conscious propaganda

Answer 26

for seduction, Ovid is a teacher of adultery
- Greene

Question 27

Ovid’s tone is very

Answer 27

condescending and patronising
- Wilkinson