Editing Ovid (section)

==Style==
Ovid is traditionally considered the final significant love elegist in the evolution of the genre and one of the most versatile in his handling of the genre's conventions. Like the other canonical elegiac poets Ovid takes on a [[Persona#In literature|persona]] in his works that emphasizes subjectivity and personal emotion over traditional militaristic and public goals, a convention that some scholars link to the relative stability provided by the Augustan settlement.<ref>Ettore Bignone, ''Historia de la literatura latina'' ([[Buenos Aires]]: Losada, 1952), p. 309.</ref><ref>A. Guillemin, "L'élement humain dans l'élégie latine". In: ''Revue des études Latines'' (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1940), p. 288.</ref> However, although [[Catullus]], [[Tibullus]] and [[Propertius]] may have been inspired in part by personal experience, the validity of "biographical" readings of these poets' works is a serious point of scholarly contention.<ref>In fact, it is generally accepted in most modern classical scholarship on elegy that the poems have little connection to autobiography or external reality. See Wycke, M. "Written Women:Propertius' Scripta Puella" in ''JRS'' 1987 and Davis, J. ''Fictus Adulter: Poet as Auctor in the Amores'' (Amsterdam, 1989) and Booth, J. "The ''Amores'': Ovid Making Love" in ''A Companion to Ovid'' (Oxford, 2009) pp. 70ff.</ref>

Ovid has been seen as taking on a persona in his poetry that is far more emotionally detached from his mistress and less involved in crafting a unique emotional realism within the text than the other elegists.<ref>Booth, J. pp. 66–68. She explains: "The text of the Amores hints at the narrator's lack of interest in depicting unique and personal emotion." p. 67</ref> This attitude, coupled with the lack of testimony that identifies Ovid's Corinna with a real person<ref>Apuleius ''Apology'' 10 provides the real names for every elegist's mistress except Ovid's.</ref> has led scholars to conclude that Corinna was never a real person, and that Ovid's relationship with her is an invention for his elegiac project.<ref>Barsby, J. ''Ovid Amores 1'' (Oxford, 1973) pp.16ff.</ref> Some scholars have even interpreted Corinna as a [[Meta (prefix)|metapoetic]] symbol for the elegiac genre itself.<ref>Keith, A. "Corpus Eroticum: Elegiac Poetics and Elegiac Puellae in Ovid's 'Amores{{' "}} in ''Classical World'' (1994) 27–40.</ref>

Ovid has been considered a highly inventive love elegist who plays with traditional elegiac conventions and elaborates the themes of the genre;<ref>Barsby, p. 17.</ref> Quintilian even calls him a "sportive" elegist.<ref name="Quint. Inst. 10.1.93"/> In some poems, he uses traditional conventions in new ways, such as the ''[[paraklausithyron]]'' of ''Am.'' 1.6, while other poems seem to have no elegiac precedents and appear to be Ovid's own generic innovations, such as the poem on Corinna's ruined hair (''Am.'' 1.14). Ovid has been traditionally seen as far more sexually explicit in his poetry than the other elegists.<ref>Booth, J. p. 65</ref>

His erotic elegy covers a wide spectrum of themes and viewpoints; the ''Amores'' focus on Ovid's relationship with Corinna, the love of [[List of mortals in Greek mythology|mythical characters]] is the subject of the ''Heroides'', and the {{Lang|la|[[Ars Amatoria]]}} and the other didactic love poems provide a handbook for relationships and seduction from a (mock-)"scientific" viewpoint. In his treatment of elegy, scholars have traced the influence of rhetorical education in his [[enumeration]], in his effects of surprise, and in his transitional devices.<ref>Jean Bayet, ''Literatura latina'' ([[Barcelona]]: Ariel, 1985), p. 278 and Barsby, pp. 23ff.</ref>

Some commentators have also noted the influence of Ovid's interest in love elegy in his other works, such as the ''Fasti'', and have distinguished his "elegiac" style from his "epic" style. [[Richard Heinze]], in his famous ''Ovids elegische Erzählung'' (1919), delineated the distinction between Ovid's styles by comparing the ''Fasti'' and ''[[Metamorphoses]]'' versions of the same legends, such as the treatment of the [[Ceres (mythology)|Ceres]]–[[Proserpina]] story in both poems. Heinze demonstrated that, "whereas in the elegiac poems a sentimental and tender tone prevails, the hexameter narrative is characterized by an emphasis on solemnity and awe..."<ref>Quoted by Theodore F. Brunner, "Deinon vs. eleeinon: Heinze Revisited" In: ''The American Journal of Philology'', Vol. 92, No. 2 (Apr. 1971), pp. 275–84.</ref> His general line of argument has been accepted by [[Brooks Otis]], who wrote:

{{blockquote|The [[List of Roman deities|gods]] are "serious" in epic as they are not in elegy; the speeches in epic are long and infrequent compared to the short, truncated and frequent speeches of elegy; the epic writer conceals himself while the elegiac fills his narrative with familiar remarks to the reader or his characters; above all perhaps, epic narrative is continuous and symmetrical... whereas elegiac narrative displays a marked asymmetry&nbsp;...<ref>[[Brooks Otis]], ''Ovid as an epic poet'' (CUP Archive, 1970), p. 24. {{ISBN|0521076153|978-0521076159}}</ref>}}

Otis wrote that in the Ovidian poems of love, he "was [[Burlesque|burlesquing]] an old theme rather than inventing a new one".<ref name="OtisI">[[Brooks Otis]], ''Ovid as an epic poet'', p. 264.</ref> Otis states that the ''Heroides'' are more serious and, though some of them are "quite different from anything Ovid had done before [...] he is here also treading a very well-worn path" to relate that the motif of females abandoned by or separated from their men was a "stock motif of [[Hellenistic]] and [[neoteric]] poetry (the classic example for us is, of course, [[Catullus 66]])".<ref name="OtisI" />

Otis also states that [[Phaedra (mythology)|Phaedra]] and [[Medea]], [[Dido]] and [[Hermione (mythology)|Hermione]] (also present in the poem) "are clever re-touchings of [[Euripides]] and [[Vergil]]".<ref name="OtisI" /> Some scholars, such as Kenney and Clausen, have compared Ovid with Virgil. According to them, Virgil was ambiguous and ambivalent while Ovid was defined and, while Ovid wrote only what he could express, Virgil wrote for the use of [[language]].<ref>Kenney, E. J. y ClausenL, W. V. ''História de la literatura clásica'' (Cambridge University), vol. II. ''Literatura Latina''. [[Madrid]]: Gredos, w/d, p. 502.</ref>