Ovid Scholarship

Roy Gibson - Praeceptor

• “The praeceptor, instead of disabusing men of their illusions about women, appears shockingly to become complicit with the ‘puellae’ and gives them advice”

Roy Gibson - Humour

• “Ovid uses humour as an effective tool for reinforcing the message of his poems”

Hall - Ovid’s audience

• “Ovid isn’t writing to women, he’s mocking them. He’s writing to men and women are the butt of the joke.”

Katharina Volk - Amor

• “Amor as taught in the poem is a cultural construct rather than a universal experience”

Christopher Brunelle - Roman History

• “The constants incorporation of Roman culture and history turns the poem into an infinitely detailed meditation on Roman life.”

Christopher Brunelleschi - Ovid’s audience

• “Ovid’s tone alternates between description and prescription, and an audience whose identity is never entirely stable”

Roy Gibson - Subversion of Epics

• “Ovid deflates epics by presenting the heroines as mere causes of erotic disappointment”

Lindsay Watson - Shadow Audience

• “Ovid’s precepts are presented with the advantage of the male lover in mind”

Rebecca Armstrong - Audience

• “The women are the objects disguised as subjects”

Peter Green - Women

• “Ovid is generally contemptuous of the whole female sex”

Bishop - Objective of Poem

• “The Ars Amatoria is about lust rather than love”

D’Elia - Ovid on homosexual

• “He detested homosexual activity in which one partner is no more a victim to the other’s desire”

Gibson - Relationships

• “Ovid’s view of human relationships is nothing if not pragmatic.”

Gibson - Art of Love

• “Pleasing the opposite sex is one of the central skills to the art of love.”

Romano - Love

• “Love is the art of outmanoeuvring the partner.”

Brunelleschi - Didactic Nature

• “May be the only didactic work of antiquity explicitly designed to bring more benefit to its author than to its intended audience.”

Myerowitz - Male v Female

• The Ars involves “for the male… the taming and handling of the female, for the female… to a great degree, the taming and handling of herself.”

Gibson - Love

• “Ovid makes clear in the preface to Book 1, love is a force that will now be subject to the control and direction of the lover.”

Anderson - Augustus

• The Ars Book 3 viewed as “an unpremeditated affront to Augustus”