Ovid and the professional discourses of scholarship, religion, rhetoric
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23449448 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alessandro Schiesaro (0000-0001-6653-5604, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Pages | 62-76 |
| Publication date | 2002-04-04 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | The Cambridge companion to Ovid (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/ccol0521772818.005 |
| OpenAlex | W2476144454 |
| ISBN | 9780521772815 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
'Ovid is not a researcher,' claimed Concetto Marchesi nearly a century ago, a remark recently echoed by John Scheid: 'Ovid is not a colleague.' Undoubtedly. Yet Ovid’s poetry is permeated with knowledge, from the religious and aetiological focus of Fasti , ostensibly the result of dogged antiquarian investigation, to the mythological feats of the Metamorphoses , but also in the abundance of, for instance, legal vocabulary in his love poetry or of recherché anecdotes in Ibis . It is hardly surprising that Ovid’s encyclopedic aspirations gained a telling, if dubious, recognition: he was considered the author of the Halieutica , a rather detailed poem on the art of fishing, as well. Equally, it is perhaps unfair further to complain that modern scholars have unduly exploited Ovid as a wealthy repository of information, since didacticism is a fundamental component of his narrative strategy even in the unexpected form it takes in the Ars amatoria and Remedia . Indeed, throughout his oeuvre Ovid plays extensively with the well-established traditions of Greek and Roman didactic poetry. On his profound knowledge of, and admiration for, the masters of the genre – Empedocles, Lucretius, Virgil – he builds a radical revision of the objectives and strategies of a form of poetry which was supposed to provide an authoritative interpretation (or at the very least a compelling description) of the universe and its fundamental principles.
Admiration · Art · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Poetry · Rhetoric · Scholarship · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Historical and Literary Studies · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2006 - 2020 (15) |
| Highly cited | No |