Latin Love Elegy and the Dawn of the Ovidian Age: A Study of the Versus Eporedienses and the Latin Classics [Paperback]

The Versus Eporedienses (Verses from Ivrea), written around the year 1080 and attributed to a certain Wido, is a highly fascinating elegiac love poem celebrating worldly pleasures in an age usually associated with contemptus mundi. One of the poem's intriguing features, its extensive use of the Latin classics, especially of Ovid, makes it a precursor of the poetry of the so-called twelfth-century renaissance. In this first book-length study of the poem, the author provides a historical contextualisation, a verse-by-verse commentary, a detailed analysis of the classical sources and a discussion of its similarities with contemporary and later medieval poetry. The monograph as a whole is a welcome addition to the dossier of medieval Latin love poetry. As a stand-alone work with helpful commentary and up-to-the-minute bibliography, this volume deserves a place on medieval Latin syllabi as a very useful student edition. Scholars will find much to admire as well in the author's wide reading in classical Latin sources and thorough demonstration of the literary texture of the poem in its relations with the burgeoning Ovidian aetas. Keith, Alison, Speculum 98/1 (January 2023)