Ovid's Fasti, a "calendar poem" on the holidays and feast days of the Roman calendar, was written in Rome and revised while Ovid was in exile on the barbarian frontier, banished by Augustus from the cultivated society of Rome that had been his delight. Ovid's work in exile evinces complicated motives: he addresses Augustus and begs him to lift the despised exile, but at the same time Ovid covertly critiques Augustus's "New Rome." Recent scholarship has concentrated on the oppositions between poet and rule revealed in Ovid's work. In a brilliant development of work on genre and intertextuality, Alessandro Barchiesi transcends the opposition of Augustan and anti-Augustan readings of Ovid's work. It is Ovid's work itself that creates a forum: if Ovid is a creation of the Augustan age, he also creates his own Augustus, using the very traits over which Augustus sought social control-eroticism, sensuality, humor-to present a subversive rendering of Roman tradition. Leading the reader through detailed assessments of and varied perspectives on Ovid's fascinating poem-a work shaped by important poetic choices and political considerations-Barchiesi reveals the poem to be far more than an antiquarian curiosity. He points to the use of Ovid as a poetic figure by modern writers around the globe, such as Antonio Tabucchi, Christoph Ransmayr, and David Malouf. Both scholars and general readers will find a newly meaningful and interesting Ovid in these pages. Buy Now!
