Wisconsin Studies in Classics

The Poetics of Speech in Ovid

Bartolo A. Natoli

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780299312138
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Silenced Voices is a pointed examination of the loss of speech, exile from community, and memory throughout the literary corpus of the Roman poet Ovid. In his book-length poem Metamorphoses, characters are transformed in ways that include losing their power of human speech. In Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, poems written after Ovid's exile from Rome in 8 ce, he represents himself as also having been transformed, losing his voice.Bartolo A. Natoli provides a unique cross-reading of these works. He examines how the motifs and ideas articulated in the Metamorphoses provide the template for the poet's representation of his own exile. Ovid depicts his transformation with an eye toward memory, reformulating how his exile would be perceived by his audience. His exilic poems are an attempt to recover the voice he lost and to reconnect with the community of Rome.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Speech and Speech Loss in Ancient Rome
• 2. Speech Loss in the Metamorphoses
• 3. Speech Loss in the Exile Literature
• 4. Speech Loss and Memory in the Exile Literature
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Appendix: Instances of Speech Loss in the Metamorphoses
• Index
• Index Locorum