Text

theses

This dissertation explores the revised publication of the Amores as Ovid’s triumphal monument to elegy, one which rivals Augustus’ political activities and building projects and is a fitting self-tribute to Ovid’s early literary career. Ovid’s revised arrangement of the three books function as a vehicle of new meaning and aesthetics for the work as a whole. In each libellus, Ovid rearranges the poems in light of a major monument of Augustan Rome, challenging the reader to visually “see” both the elegiac and the Augustan monuments simultaneously and to construct meaning and political discourse from their comparison. The major monument is introduced in each book’s second poem, which effectively revises the books’ programmatic initial poems and presents the monument as the proper ambience for understanding the schematic and thematic arrangement of each book. Through this new comparative structure, Ovid voices dissent from the Augustan Principate and creates his own didactic message about the proper tension between the ruler’s auctoritas and the citizens’ libertas in a peaceful Rome. In Amores 1 Ovid maps his new arrangement onto the recently dedicated Forum Augustum to highlight Augustan intrusion in the lives of Romans and to lampoon the monument’s triumphal claims. In Amores 2 the Portico of the Danaids at the Temple of Palatine Apollo evokes Augustus’ propagandistic message of moral renewal at the end of the civil wars, a message that Ovid rejects and recasts by presenting an indictment of Augustus’ marriage legislation as constituting a continuation of civil aggression in the private sphere. In Amores 3, the poet presents two distinct visions of the valley of the Circus Maximus to highlight the layered structure of Roman landscape and identity and introduce the major structuring theme of the final libellus, the raw natural environment and the fictive arts of the poets, and politicians, who shape that nature. Ovid’s politics, however, are not thoroughly subversive. Rather, he offers the Princeps some realistic advice on the need for moderation. He does not object to Augustus’ rule per se, but to Augustus’ over-reaching and moralizing control that endangers the libertas of Rome’s citizens and Rome’s poets.

ETD_3533

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Kathleen J. Shea

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000063649

doi:10.7282/T3HQ3XZV

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.

4843520

windows xp

ETD

application/pdf

application/x-tar

4843520

1c150c961cf7df04079637230c22f71662fc26bc