Ovid's Homer

This book is the first extended modern study of the Latin poet Ovid’s Homeric intertextuality. Ovid’s relationship with the Homeric poems is shown to be neither occasional nor simply incidental; rather, careful and creative readings of the abundant evidence of Ovid’s career-long engagement with the Iliad and the Odyssey demonstrate a coherent and profound pattern of animated intertextuality and transformative reception. Passages and poems from throughout Ovid’s major works offer a vivid picture of the ways in which Ovid styles himself as a worthy successor to Homer. Central to the discussion throughout the book are two central tropes, articulated on both the thematic and metatexual levels: paternity and desire. For Ovid, the poetics of paternity is a way of reading the Homeric poems, as well as a way of positioning himself as a legitimate heir to Homer’s poetic authority; and the poetics of desire, expressed especially strongly through repetition, allows Ovid to characterize himself as a devoted reader and editor of Homer, whose emulation of his model is grounded in an intimate appreciation for and knowledge of the text. Through a sustained reading sensitive to the dynamics of reception, this book puts forward a new perspective on Ovid, and offers a fertile model for the analysis of Latin poetry.