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Line 182: Ovid is traditionally considered the final significant love elegist in the evolution of the genre and one of the most versatile in his handling of the genre's conventions. Like the other canonical elegiac poets Ovid takes on a [[Persona#In literature|persona]] in his works that emphasizes subjectivity and personal emotion over traditional militaristic and public goals, a convention that some scholars link to the relative stability provided by the Augustan settlement.<ref>Ettore Bignone, ''Historia de la literatura latina'' ([[Buenos Aires]]: Losada, 1952), p. 309.</ref><ref>A. Guillemin, "L'élement humain dans l'élégie latine". In: ''Revue des études Latines'' (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1940), p. 288.</ref> However, although [[Catullus]], [[Tibullus]] and [[Propertius]] may have been inspired in part by personal experience, the validity of "biographical" readings of these poets' works is a serious point of scholarly contention.<ref>In fact, it is generally accepted in most modern classical scholarship on elegy that the poems have little connection to autobiography or external reality. See Wycke, M. "Written Women:Propertius' Scripta Puella" in ''JRS'' 1987 and Davis, J. ''Fictus Adulter: Poet as Auctor in the Amores'' (Amsterdam, 1989) and Booth, J. "The ''Amores'': Ovid Making Love" in ''A Companion to Ovid'' (Oxford, 2009) pp. 70ff.</ref> Ovid has been seen as taking on a persona in his poetry that is far more emotionally detached from his mistress and less involved in crafting a unique emotional realism within the text than the other elegists.<ref>Booth, J. pp. 66–68. She explains: "The text of the Amores hints at the narrator's lack of interest in depicting unique and personal emotion." p. 67</ref> This attitude, coupled with the lack of testimony that identifies Ovid's Corinna with a real person<ref>Apuleius ''Apology'' 10 provides the real names for every elegist's mistress except Ovid's.</ref> has led scholars to conclude that Corinna was never a real person – and that Ovid's relationship with her is an invention for his elegiac project.<ref>Barsby, J. ''Ovid Amores 1'' (Oxford, 1973) pp.16ff.</ref> Some scholars have even interpreted Corinna as a [[ Ovid has been considered a highly inventive love elegist who plays with traditional elegiac conventions and elaborates the themes of the genre;<ref>Barsby, p. 17.</ref> Quintilian even calls him a "sportive" elegist.<ref name="Quint. Inst. 10.1.93"/> In some poems, he uses traditional conventions in new ways, such as the ''[[paraklausithyron]]'' of ''Am.'' 1.6, while other poems seem to have no elegiac precedents and appear to be Ovid's own generic innovations, such as the poem on Corinna's ruined hair (''Am.'' 1.14). Ovid has been traditionally seen as far more sexually explicit in his poetry than the other elegists.<ref>Booth, J. p. 65</ref> | |||