Ovid's Early Poetry From his Single Heroides to his Remedia Amoris

Ovid is one of the greatest poets in the Classical tradition and Western literature. This book represents the most comprehensive study to date of his early output as a unified literary production. Firstly, the book proposes new ways of organising this part of Ovid's poetic career, the chronology of which is notoriously difficult to establish. Next, by combining textual criticism with issues relating to manuscript transmission, the book decisively counters arguments levelled against the authenticity of Heroides 15, which consequently allows for a revaluation of Ovid's early output. Furthermore, by focusing on the literary device of allusion, the book stresses the importance of Ovid's single Heroides 1-15 in relationship with his Amores I-III, Ars amatoria I-III and Remedia amoris. Finally, the book identifies three kinds of Ovidian poetics that are found in his early poetry and that point towards the works of myth and exile that followed in his later career.

Introduction; 1. Dating the young Ovid; 2. Ovidian signatures and the single Heroides; 3. The last of the great Roman poets - with the latest news; 4. The authenticity of Heroides 15; 5. Sappho among heroines; 6. Sapphic self-reflections in Ovid's Amores; 7. Art, being and nothingness in Ovid's Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris; 8. The creation of a poet.

Thea S. Thorsen is Associate Professor of Latin at the Department of Historical Studies: Classics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy (Cambridge, 2013) and Greek and Roman Games in the Computer Age (2012) and co-editor, with Stephen Harrison, of Sappho at Rome: Receptions from Lucretius to Martial (forthcoming). She has published numerous articles on Greek and Roman poetry and prose, in Norwegian and in English, and she became the first person to have published translations of all of Ovid's love elegies into Norwegian verse (2001–9).