Silenced Voices: The Poetics of Speech in Ovid [Hardcover]

Silenced Voicesis a pointed examination of the loss of speech, exile from community, and memory throughout the literary corpus of the Roman poet Ovid. In his book-length poemMetamorphoses, characters are transformed in ways that include losing their power of human speech. InTristiaandEpistulae ex Ponto, poems written after Ovid's exile from Rome in 8 ce, he represents himself as also having been transformed, losing his voice.

Bartolo A. Natoli provides a unique cross-reading of these works. He examines how the motifs and ideas articulated in theMetamorphosesprovide the template for the poet's representation of his own exile. Ovid depicts his transformation with an eye toward memory, reformulating how his exile would be perceived by his audience. His exilic poems are an attempt to recover the voice he lost and to reconnect with the community of Rome.

Examines speech loss across all of Ovid's writings and the ways that motif is explored, developed, and modified in the poet's work after his exile from Rome.

A significant and distinctive contribution to Ovidian scholarship, tackling the issues of voice and silence in a comparative reading of Ovid's varied works. Gianpiero Rosati, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

Bartolo A. Natoli is an assistant professor of classics at Randolph-Macon College.

Acknowledgments?????????????????? ? 1 Speech and Speech Loss in Ancient Rome: A Working Schema?????????????????? 2 Speech Loss in the Metamorphoses????????????? 3 Speech Loss in the Exile Literature?????????????? 4 Speech Loss and Memory in the Exile Literature????????????????? ? Notes?????????????? Works Cited???????????????? Appendix A: Instances of Speech Loss in the Metamorphoses??????????????????????? Appendix B: Uses of mutus in Latin Literature??????????????????????? Index Locorum