ovid

• Mill - Ovid often distances himself from his female addresses in Ars 3, particularly in self-reflective comments

  Such reflections suggest the existence of a male audience in the background, at least for part of the time
• Myerowitz - “Women were not being instructed in their own right but in order that they might become ‘sophisticated accomplices’ in the male game of love”
• Downing - The praeceptor, essentially hostile towards the real woman, whom he regards as savage, offensive, and physically flawed, aims to make her more amenable to the male audience by replacing the natural with the artificial, an anti-Pygmalion figure
• Some critics - Argue that the praeceptor should be viewed as a figure who, whilst serving male interests for the most part, does offer some instruction to women which appears to be principally for their benefit
• Gibson - Ovid crosses class boudaries
• Hornblower - ‘He was married three times and divorced twice before he was 30.’
• Volk - Ovid is lover as well as teacher and poet
• Volk - “Amor is taught in the poem as a cultural construct rather than a universal experience”
• Hollis - Love is not so much an emotion as an activity
• Fyler - Argued that amor is an irrational passion, and Ovid’s attempt to bring it under a rational framework works only by trivialising the passion and reducing it to the level of an emotionless stratagem.
• Solodow - Ovid plays with the didactic tradition to ennoble the lover, to attain dignity and authority for both himself and his subject.
• Verstraete - ‘Sexual pleasure must be equally enjoyed by the man and the woman.’
• Clarke - on Part 18, it is the woman, not the man, who receives instructions… she must conform to the expectations of the male gaze
• Ogilvie - Ovid does not actually advocate adultery
• D'Elia - ‘He detested homosexual activity in which one partner is no more than a victim to the other's desire
• Kelk - "one cannot help looking at Ovid’s flattery [of Aug + family] … as being tongue-in-cheek”
• Bishop - "lacks sincerity"
• Green - Opposes Bishop’s view! Says that Ovid’s parody of didactic poetry has been done to make an “implicit commentary on Roman love and Augustan politics”
• Green - The poem alludes to other poems in the genre - the sentiments of Ovid’s predecessors often recast to serve the ironic and incongruous function of ‘proving’ a point in the philosophy of love
• Green - The mapping of myth onto reality is by no means exact, and the reader is encouraged to make different meanings
• Sharrock - Discusses the role of mythological exempla as creating digressions from the main text

  Perhaps it is the instructional parts that are obstructive, in that they slow down the instructional momentum of the ‘digressional’ stories.
• Holis - The work’s didactic form was something of a facade
• Gibson - Ovid uses humour as a tool to reinforce his message
• Green - Ovid champions romantic love by using Augustus’ own discourse against him
• Labate - The lovers’ sharing of space and time with Augustan civil life is sanctioned by the conduct of Romulus against the Sabine women - from that point on, public ceremony and love became intertwined
• Gibson - Ovid advocates a principle of individual decorum, whereby each woman must choose the style that best suits her: in short, female appearance is judged to be a matter of aesthetics rather than morality

  Clashes with Augustus’ Leges Iuliae, which had reinforced the polar stereotypes for meretrix and matrona by requiring women to dress according to their sexual status