Academic Prologues to Ovid and the Vernacular Art of Love

Ovid was the most ambivalent of all the grammatical auctores — the expert on both the art of love and its rejection, an apparent misogynist yet also a champion of legal, married love, an acclaimed mythographer as well as the ancient ‘master of love’. These paradoxes afforded at once a challenge and an opportunity to medieval scholars, translators, and imitators of the ancient poet. This chapter looks at three French translations of Ovid's ‘art of love’ (Jacques d'Amiens's Art d'amors, Confort d'amour, and Guiart) that represent major ways in which he was metamorphosed in the middle ages — as the poet of courtly compliment and as an authority in the sphere of ethics — while making very clear just how problematic such transformations could be. The L'Art d'amours, a translation into French of the Ars amatoria, is also considered.

Ambivalence · Art · Art history · Champion · Literature · Vernacular · Classics · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Renaissance Literature and Culture