Renaissance Receptions of Ovid's Tristia Dissertation
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RENAISSANCE RECEPTIONS OF OVID’S TRISTIA DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Gabriel Fuchs, M.A. Graduate Program in Greek and Latin The Ohio State University 2013 Dissertation Committee: Frank T. Coulson, Advisor Benjamin Acosta-Hughes Tom Hawkins Copyright by Gabriel Fuchs 2013 ABSTRACT This study examines two facets of the reception of Ovid’s Tristia in the 16th century: its commentary tradition and its adaptation by Latin poets. It lays the groundwork for a more comprehensive study of the Renaissance reception of the Tristia by providing a scholarly platform where there was none before (particularly with regard to the unedited, unpublished commentary tradition), and offers literary case studies of poetic postscripts to Ovid’s Tristia in order to explore the wider impact of Ovid’s exilic imaginary in 16th-century Europe. After a brief introduction, the second chapter introduces the three major commentaries on the Tristia printed in the Renaissance: those of Bartolomaeus Merula (published 1499, Venice), Veit Amerbach (1549, Basel), and Hecules Ciofanus (1581, Antwerp) and analyzes their various contexts, styles, and approaches to the text. The third chapter shows the commentators at work, presenting a more focused look at how these commentators apply their differing methods to the same selection of the Tristia, namely Book 2. These two chapters combine to demonstrate how commentary on the Tristia developed over the course of the 16th century: it begins from an encyclopedic approach, becomes focused on rhetoric, and is later aimed at textual criticism, presenting a trajectory that ii becomes increasingly focused and philological. Chapter 4 is the first of two case studies in 16th-century Latin elegy. It examines the Polish poet laureate Klemens Janicki (1516-1543) and the book of elegies he provocatively entitled Tristium Liber. The chapter provides a biographical section, and elaborates the literary process by which his adaptation of Ovid functions by focusing on how Janicki assumes the Ovidian exilic persona as a tool for ethical and political critiques. The final chapter is a study of a selection of the Latin elegies written by Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560) while he was ‘exiled’ to Rome. It first examines the Tristia as nostalgic poetry, and shows how du Bellay uses the exilic persona to explore the idealization and privileging of the physical site of Rome and to establish himself in the aesthetic space of nostalgia created by Ovid in the Tristia and Ex Ponto as a means to assert his poetic autonomy. iii UXORI CARISSIMAE PARENTIBUSQUE OPTIMIS iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank above all my advisor Frank Coulson for his dedication and guidance, along with Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Tom Hawkins for their intellectual and moral support. I thank all the faculty of the Classics department, from whom I learned so much. I want to make special mention of Will Batstone, whose teaching showed me how to truly read Latin. Among my graduate friends, I want to acknowledge community of the DWRG, lead by Richard Fletcher, for their much-valued camaraderie and helpful feedback: Joey Danielewicz, Sam Flores, Ben McCloskey, Max Paule, John Richards, and Mark Wright. I am grateful to the Ohio State graduate school for their generous fellowship support, and the Department of Classics for supporting me as a teaching associate. I owe a great debt to Rick Williams, my undergraduate mentor, for infecting me with his love of the ancient world and for teaching me the fundamentals of scholarship. Finally, I can never thank enough my wife, Michele, and my parents. v VITA 2006................................................................B.A. Classics, Southern Illinois University 2010................................................................M.A. Classics, The Ohio State University 2007 to present ............................................Susan L. Huntington Dean’s Distinguished University Fellow, Department of Classics, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Greek and Latin vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.............................................................................................................................. ii Dedication ........................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... v Vita .................................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................ viii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Renaissance Commentaries on Ovid’s Tristia ....................................... 23 Chapter 3: Analysis and Comparison of Commentary on Tristia 2 ........................ 90 Chapter 4: A Polish Poet in Ovidian Exile: Klemens Janicki’s Tristium Liber...... 136 Chapter 5: Too Much Like the Real Thing: du Bellay’s Latin Elegies and Ovid’s Exile Poems ................................................................................................................... 258 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 335 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1. Frontispiece to Celementis Ianitii poetae laureati. Tristium Liber I, Variarum elegiarum I, Epigrammatum I (Kraków: Florian Ungler, 1542) ............... 181 Figure 5.1. Diagram of Ovid’s exilic situation ........................................................ 330 Figure 5.2. Diagram of du Bellay’s exilic situation ................................................ 331 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The problem that the present work addresses is by and large a problem of empty space. To date, there remains no volume that is solely dedicated to the reception of Ovid‘s Tristia in the Renaissance. The dearth of information on the rich commentary tradition of the 16th century represents a significant void in the history of the reception of Ovid‘s exile poetry. Much of the Neo-Latin elegy that stems from this fascinating period and engages with the Augustan poet‘s exilic creations remains almost entirely unexplored in scholarly literature.1 (This is particularly true of those elegies which were penned by poets who are not already household names.) Wilfried Stroh‘s survey of the Nachleben of the Tristia, published in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW), skips from Petrarch to a desultory mention of Joachim Du Bellay‘s Regrets, then on to Goethe and Schiller in the 19th century.2 This study seeks to lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive study of the Renaissance reception of the Tristia, to provide 1 Much more scholarship has been centered on vernacular poets, however, and unsurprisingly focused on Shakespeare and Spenser (e.g. M. L. Stapleton, Spenser‘s Ovidian Poetics (Newark, DE: Univ. of Delaware Press), 41-73. 2 Wilfried Stroh, "Tröstende Musen: Zur literarhistorischen Stellung und Bedeutung von Ovids Exilgedichten," ANRW 2, no. 31.4 (1981): 2638-2684. 1 a scholarly platform where there was none before (especially with regard to the unedited, unpublished commentary tradition), while at the same time offering literary case studies of poetic postscripts to Ovid‘s Tristia to explore the wider impact of Ovid‘s exilic imaginary in 16th-century Europe. Ovid‘s Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto (not to mention the Ibis) are often, it seems, considered to be the ‗final frontier‘ of Ovidian studies; interest in these works always lags behind the cyclical resurgences of interest in the amatory elegies and the monolithic Metamorphoses. The most recent generation of Ovidian scholarship has seen a burst of new interest in Ovid‘s Black Sea compositions, which finds its beginnings in the works of Jo-Marie Claassen3 and particularly in the excellent psychological examination enacted upon the exilic Ovid‘s persona by Gareth Williams‘ Banished Voices.4 More recently, a new translation by Peter Green has made these poems more available to the general reader.5 The past several years have seen the publication of a volume of Claassen‘s collected essays on the exilic poetry in Ovid Revisited,6 as well as monographs by Martin Amman 3 These include ―Ovid's Poems from Exile. The Creation of a Myth and the Triumph of Poetry," Antike Und Abenland 34 (1988): 158-169; "Meter and Emotion in Ovid's exilic poetry," CW 82 (1989): 351-365; and especially Displaced Persons (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999). 4 Gareth Williams, Banished Voices: Readings in Ovid's Exile Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1994). I would also be remiss in leaving out a mention of the less monumental, but no less influential and electrifying article of Sergio Casali ("Quaerenti plura legendum: On the Necessity of 'Reading More' in Ovid's Exile Poetry," Ramus 26 (1997): 80-112), and also Ellen Oliensis ("Return to Sender: The Rhetoric of Nomina in Ovid's Exile Poetry," Ramus 26 (1997): 172- 193). 5 The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters, trans. Peter Green (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 6 Jo-Marie Claassen, Ovid Revisited: the Poet in Exile (London: Duckworth, 2008). 2 on Ovidian