MITHOLOGICAL AND EXILE: mythology and figures in Ovid's Ibis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18830/issn2238-362X.v6.n2.2016.01Keywords:
Ibis, Mythology, OvidAbstract
The Ibis of Ovid, an enigmatic poem written during the poet's exile at Tomis, contains a series of violent imprecations drawn from history and mythology. Although the poem is, in many aspects, different from
the other works by the poet, it shares with them a common feature of his production: the mythological references. Scholars have tended to set the Ibis aside when investigating Ovid's exile poetry or they have
rather focused on answering a limited series of questions, summarized by Williams (1996: 3) as: "Who is Ibis? What had he done to provoke Ovid's curse? What can be inferred from the Ovidian poem about
the length, meter, and (extra-)literary purpose of Callimachus's Ἶβις? Who was Ἶβις?", and only few have stopped to consider the Ovidian, exilic, and poetic contexts of the poem. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the Ovidian usage of mythological figures in this poem; we suggest that, when presenting the many bad wishes towards Ibis, the poet repeats many of the figures that he used in Tristia to create his own myth of exile. Hence, myth functions as intermediary between the lyrical “I” and Ibis, reinforcing the place of the poem in the apologetic program of exile.
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