Love Poems (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) - Softcover

Ovid

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840221097 ISBN 13: 9781840221091

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

The Roman poet Ovid (43BC-17AD) gives an ironic and parodic twist to love poetry in his highly original and entertaining explorations of sexual desire and its consequences. In his Amores (Loves, or Love Affairs) he partly celebrates, partly burlesques, the self-dramatising misery and 'slavery to love' that characterise the poet-lover of Roman erotic elegy. The Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) is a mock didactic poem, a self- help manual that teaches its readers how to achieve and retain erotic conquests. Offering methods to control what is definitively uncontrollable - namely, erotic desire - Ovid pursues all the ironies and paradoxes of his theme in this dazzling work. In Remedia Amoris (Cures for Love) the poet conceives desire as a disease curable by therapeutic advice. This translation of John Dryden (1631-1700) and his contemporaries in a style matchlessly suited to the originals.

About this title

About the Author

Publius Ovidius Naso, a Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. Ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature, Ovid was generally considered the greatest
master of the elegiac couplet.

Language Notes

Text: English, Latin (translation)

Edition details

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1840221097
• ISBN 13: 9781840221091
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256