Book Description

Augustan love elegy represents one of the most important and most distinctive Roman contributions to European and world literature. This volume presents the first detailed commentary in any language on Ovid's Amores Book 3, the last collection of love poems composed in the Augustan age. Aimed at both students and scholars, the commentary has been written to be as accessible to as many readers as possible, with all quotations from ancient Greek and modern languages being translated. It includes an Introduction for the general reader which pays particular attention not only to the book's poetic design and the distinctive features of Ovid's style, but the relationship of the whole three-book collection to earlier love elegy and its handling of political and social questions. It offers an edition of the text of Book 3 based on printed editions together with a translation designed to clarify the surface meaning of the Latin. P. J. Davis's commentary focuses on topics including Ovid's engagement with the works of earlier poets, his use of rhetoric and wit, his employment of verbal and metrical patterns, textual difficulties, and, of course, the elucidation of linguistic problems. Amores Book 3 takes love elegy in new directions giving us, for example, a dream-vision poem, a dutiful husband's account of a religious pilgrimage, and the speech of a pickup artist trying to seduce a girl at the races. Perhaps its most striking feature is its shift away from obsession with a single mistress to reflection on the poet's place in the tradition of Latin love poetry, with poems explicitly devoted to issues raised by Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius.