Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ovid and the Ovidian Tradition (review)

This book succeeds well in its admirable aim of assisting instructors and provides extensive help both for those teaching Ovid and the reception of Ovid for the first time and for those who would like to broaden and enliven their existing lecture courses in those areas.

Part 1 (“Materials”) contains introductory material. There are essays on Ovid’s life and afterlife, on Ovid and religion, on the Ovide moralisé and on Ovid and art; and in other chapters commentaries on and (modern and older) translations of Ovid are handled, and there is a discussion of trends in the teaching of Ovid’s poetry and the Ovidian tradition. The entries in Part 2 (“Approaches”) are organized into four sections: practical suggestions for teaching in different contexts; political aspects to the works of Ovid and his imitators; gender and the body in the Ovidian oeuvre; and the different ways in which the Roman poet has been taken over and transformed by later writers (such as Dante, Cervantes and Ransmayr).

Not surprisingly, as we have here a series of contributions by diverse hands, there are ups and downs with regard to quality and usefulness. A few chapters do strike me as rather dull and superficial. It is also a pity that there are no illustrations, especially for the comments on our poet and the visual arts (23–26, 241–249). Actual mistakes and serious flaws are not common. I will point out the more significant ones for the benefit of the users of this book. Boyd’s remarks on modern translations (34–38) are not without interest, but it would surely have been more valuable to analyse those translations in terms of how accurate and readable they are and to warn instructors with little or no Latin away from very free versions which are not a reliable guide to what Ovid actually wrote. Stapleton’s assertion (91) that the Ars Amatoria was concerned with the seduction of married women contradicts Ovid’s own disclaimer at Ars am. 1.31–34. Hanning’s chapter on wit and word play in the Amores should be read with caution, as it is at some points confused and confusing, and at other points speculative and strained, as when he states (110) that there is erotic innuendo at Amores 1.6.5–6, hinting at the elegist penetrating his girlfriend by slipping his penis into her vagina sideways, a most improbable feat of sexual acrobatics (viewers, do not try this at home!). Miller on sex and violence in the Amores is not always persuasive in his attempts to support his claim that the Amores are “filled with images of violence” (for example, he cites Amores 2.13 and 2.14, maintaining that in those poems Corinna is “assailed” for having an abortion [161]). At 171–177 Hallett sees allusion to Sulpicia in Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe narrative, but the parallels that she posits seem to me at any rate very thin, and not one of them convinces me. In addition, although the bibliography is generally full, there are two astounding omissions—my own Ovid With Love (selections from the Ars Amatoria with lots of help for students over translation and appreciation) and Mythical and Legendary Narrative in Ovid’s Fasti (on numerous aspects of Ovid’s story-telling technique in that poem).

However, those reservations aside, I can warmly recommend this book. Importantly, it is based on personal pedagogical experience. It covers a broad range of aspects, and on the whole the expression is clear and mercifully free from jargon (but see the bottom of 191 and the top of 192). The advice given and the approaches taken are in the main both sensible and stimulating, and Classicists teaching Ovid in the original or in translation will find lots of interesting comments and activities which they can easily...