Ovid's Language and Style

Bibliographic Data

ID20041016
AuthorsE J Kenney (corresponding author)
Year2002
Pages27-89
Publication date2002-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueBrill's Companion to Ovid (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789047400950_003
OpenAlexW875610856
ISBN9789047400950
LanguageEN
Citations received26

Ovid's handling of the pentameter is central in any discussion of the style of his elegies. The ease and fluency of Ovid's writing is highly deceptive. The straightforwardness and indeed ordinariness that scholars identify as his stylistic trademarks are the product of innumerable discreet manipulations of meter, diction and syntax. The most immediate impression made by Ovid's elegiac writing is one of fluency and speed. Ovid deploys his linguistic resources to secure metrical fluency and smoothness so deftly that it is easy to label his technique mechanical. The average length of Ovid's periods in the Metamorphoses , mechanically measured, probably does not differ significantly from that of Virgil's. Ovid does not go out of Virgil's way to avoid compounds already used in the Aeneid and therefore, so to say, sanctified, but he also innovates on his own account with moderate freedom. Keywords: Aeneid ; Metamorphoses ; Ovid's elegiac writing; pentameter; Virgil

Art · Linguistics · Literature · Classical Antiquity Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Psychology

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