Offers detailed reading of the Amores, oriented toward the writer's and reader's pleasure, that reframes the discussion around elegy and identity.

Students of Latin have long enjoyed the poetry of Ovid, but his love poems, aptly titled Amores, have proved more difficult to introduce into the classroom. Curricular changes and increased appreciation of sophisticated love poetry are finally making room for the Amores. This edition of the first book of the Amores—the only one available for both intermediate- and advanced-level classes—addresses the needs of students of varying abilities and experience, helping them comprehend, and more fully enjoy, the rich complexities of Ovid's poetry. In their introduction to the volume, Maureen B. Ryan and Caroline A. Perkins recount Ovid's career as a poet, describe the elegiac genre, and explain elegiac meter and style. For the Latin text, they briefly introduce each poem, acquainting students with relevant subject matter and themes. Their commentary provides helpful notes clarifying grammatical constructions, word order, ellipsis, and other complexities of the Latin language that can challenge even the most experienced student. On the assumption that students will gain skills as they work through each poem, Ryan and Perkins give extensive and repeated assistance at the beginning of the text, tapering off as the student's facility increases. Throughout their commentary, they highlight thematic points of interest; explain mythological, cultural, and literary allusions; and stress the importance of Ovid's literary innovations. In addition to the critical apparatus accompanying each poem, this volume features a glossary of literary terms, a comprehensive Latin-to-English vocabulary, and an up-do-date bibliography.

Parallel latin & English texts.

The most sophisticated and daring poetic ironist of the early Roman Empire, Publius Ovidius Naso, is perhaps best known for his oft-imitated Metamorphoses. But the Roman poet also wrote lively and lewd verse on the subjects of love, sex, marriage, and adultery—a playful parody of the earnest erotic poetry traditions established by his literary ancestors. The Amores, Ovid's first completed book of poetry, explores the conventional mode of erotic elegy with some subversive and silly twists: the poetic narrator sets up a lyrical altar to an unattainable woman only to knock it down by poking fun at her imperfections. Ars Amatoria takes the form of didactic verse in which a purportedly mature and experienced narrator instructs men and women alike on how to best play their hands at the long con of love. Ovid's Erotic Poems offers a modern English translation of the Amores and Ars Amatoria that retains the irreverent wit and verve of the original. Award-winning poet Len Krisak captures the music of Ovid's richly textured Latin meters through rhyming couplets that render the verse as playful and agile as it was meant to be. Sophisticated, satirical, and wildly self-referential, Ovid's Erotic Poems is not just a wickedly funny send-up of romantic and sexual mores but also a sharp critique of literary technique and poetic convention.

Latin love elegy is one of the most important poetic genres in the Augustan era, also known as the golden age of Roman literature. This volume brings together leading scholars from Australia, Europe and North America to present and explore the Greek and Roman backdrop for Latin love elegy, the individual Latin love elegists (both the canonical and the non-canonical), their poems and influence on writers in later times. The book is designed as an accessible introduction for the general reader interested in Latin love elegy and the history of love and lament in Western literature, as well as a collection of critically stimulating essays for students and scholars of Latin poetry and of the classical tradition.

M. L. Stapleton's Harmful Eloquence: Ovid's Amores from Antiquity to Shakespeare traces the influence of the early elegiac poetry of Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C.E.-17 C.E.) on European literature from 500-1600 C.E. The Amores served as a classical model for love poetry in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and were essential to the formation of fin' Amors, or "courtly love". Medieval Latin poets, the troubadours, Dante, Petrarch, and Shakespeare were all familiar with Ovid in his various forms, and all depended greatly upon his Amores in composing their cansos, canzoniere, and sonnets. Harmful Eloquence begins with a detailed analysis of the Amores themselves and their artistic unity. It moves on to explain the fragmentary transmission of the Amores fragments in the "Latin Anthology" and the cohesion of the fragments into the conventions of medieval Latin and troubadour "courtly love" poetry. Two subsequent chapters explain the use of the Amores, their narrator, and the conventions of "courtly love" in the poetry of both Dante and Petrarch. The final chapter concentrates on Shakespeare's reprocessing and parody of this material in his sonnets. Medievalists, classicists, and scholars of Renaissance studies will find Harmful Eloquence particularly engaging and useful. This work has received early praise for its Shakespearean content and is vital to scholars in this area. Stapleton's scholarship is both enjoyable and readable with a contemporary approach.

This study examines the literary complexities of the poetry which Ovid wrote in Tomis, his place of exile on the coast of the Black Sea after he was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus in A.D. 8 because of the alleged salaciousness of the Ars Amatoria and a mysterious misdemeanour which is nowhere explained. Exile transforms Ovid into a melancholic poet of despair who claims that his creative faculties are in terminal decline. But recent research has exposed the ironic disjunction between many of the poet's claims and the latent artistry which belies them. Through a series of close readings which offer a new analytical contribution to the scholarly evaluation of the exile poetry, Dr Williams examines the nature and the extent of Ovidian irony in Tomis and demonstrates the complex literary designs which are consistently disguised under a veil of dissimulation. Gareth Williams aims to counteract traditional scholarly antipathy to the exile poetry, which could be said to represent the last frontier in modern Ovidian studies. Scholars working in the field will welcome his insights.

Translations of Ovid's love poems.

-- Introduction -- Large Print Latin Text for reproduction -- Literal Translation of all passages -- Sample Tests -- Bibliography