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Extract
The most important contribution of recent scholarship to the understanding of the Amores is the study of Ovid’s treatment of the genre and of his literary predecessors. The terms parody, travesty, and reductio ad absurdum are not new, but they need some further definition or amplification. What is not in doubt is that the Amores are basically a light-hearted reworking of the genre. They are not the product of personal emotion, nor do they have any immediate relationship to the life of the poet; and many of the questions which in the past engaged the student of love-elegy (such as morality, sincerity, autobiography) are thus unimportant or irrelevant. Some scholars still insist that Corinna was a real person; but in a parody this is unlikely, and some of Ovid’s own references (Am. 2. 17. 29 f., Ars. 3. 538) seem to cast doubt on her existence.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1978
Footnotes
1.
Our evidence for the text of Ovid’s amatory works has been augmented by the rediscovery of the manuscript Y (Hamiltonensis), once wrongly catalogued as being of the fourteenth century but now recognized as Carolingian; see F. Munari, Il codice Hamilton 471 di Ovidio (Rome, 1965). The standard text of the amatory works is that of E. J. Kenney (Oxford, 1961; corr. edn. 1965), on which see G. P. Goold, HSCPh 69 (1965), 1–107; for Kenney’s subsequent remarks on Y see CR 16 (1966), 267-71. Goold’s views on the text of Am. have now been incorporated into his revision of Showerman’s Loeb text (London, 1914; 2nd edn. 1977). A. G. Lee’s English translation (London, 1968) is a brilliant tour de force. The only English commentary is J. A. Barsby’s on Am. I (Oxford, 1973); see also the editions of P. Brandt (Leipzig, 1911; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), F. Munari (Florence, 1951; 5th edn. 1970), W. Marg and R. Harder (Munich, 1957; 4th edn. 1976), and F. W. Lenz (Berlin, 1965; 3rd edn. 1976). Apart from the relevant chapters of Fränkel, Wilkinson, D’Elia, and Frécaut (reference to which is assumed in each chapter of this Survey) there are good recent discussions of Am. by Lee and Du Quesnay; see also Reitzenstein, Otis (1), and Marg. There is a bibliography for Am. in Munari’s edition (xxxix ff., 221 ff.) and for the amatory works as a whole in Zinn, 100 ff.