Ovids Amores Book One

Parallel latin & English texts.

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. --

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.

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.

A translation of Ovid's Amores, which does not set out to be literal but to reproduce the original as closely as possible in our own idiom. Passion, sensuality, frustration, euphoria, anger, jealousy and happiness mingle in poems which nonetheless never take themselves seriously.

This is a full-scale commentary devoted to the third book of Ovid's Ars Amatoria. It includes an Introduction, a revision of E. J. Kenney's Oxford text of the book, and detailed line-by-line and section-by-section commentary on the language and ideas of the text. Combining traditional philological scholarship with some of the concerns of more recent critics, both Introduction and commentary place particular emphasis on: the language of the text; the relationship of the book to the didactic, 'erotodidactic' and elegiac traditions; Ovid's usurpation of the lena's traditional role of erotic instructor of women; the poet's handling of the controversial subjects of cosmetics and personal adornment; and the literary and political significances of Ovid's unexpected emphasis in the text of Ars III on restraint and 'moderation'. The book will be of interest to all postgraduates and scholars working on Augustan poetry.

Barbara Pavlock unmasks major figures in Ovid’s Metamorphoses as surrogates for his narrative persona, highlighting the conflicted revisionist nature of the Metamorphoses. Although Ovid ostensibly validates traditional customs and institutions, instability is in fact a defining feature of both the core epic values and his own poetics. The Image of the Poet explores issues central to Ovid’s poetics—the status of the image, the generation of plots, repetition, opposition between refined and inflated epic style, the reliability of the narrative voice, and the interrelation of rhetoric and poetry. The work explores the constructed author and complements recent criticism focusing on the reader in the text. 2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine

Brings the Amores into the forefront of scholarly discussion