Ovid and the Politics of Reading

Abstract

What did Ovid think of Augustus? Did he off end the emperor? Did he intend to? Why was he exiled (assuming that he was!)?1 These are questions which haunt modern (and not so modern) scholars, fascinated as we are by the biography of those we consider great. This will be no new investigation, in that I shall be addressing a question as old as the work it concerns: rather, it seeks to offer a fresh look at the issue, with the aid of some modern theory. Throughout this paper, in the manner of academie discourse, I appropriate the first person plural for rhetorical purposes, imposing my readings on you. But not because Fm a rotten cheat: rather because any use of the term 'we' involves such appropriation, and indeed because the act of reading my text involves you (and me) in playing the role of my reader, whatever other roles such as that of a dissenting reader you may wish to play as well2. The question is: was the Ars Amatoria 'anti-Augustan'? Now, as is becoming increasingly realised, this question is not as simple as it seems3. One of the difficulties with discussions of this nature is that they necessitate confrontation with the rhetoric of 'parody' and 'irony'. A text can (always?) be appropriated into a reading opposite to some other reading by being declared 'ironie'. This, moreover, is only one of many ways in which texts may be appropriated to various readings. One might, for example, say that text χ displays something y which 'we' ail agree is bad, and that although χ seems to condone y, it must in fact hâve the effect of condemning it, because it exposes it as bad. But how can an author be sure to escape complicity with the thing supposedly parodied? One point should be clarified: by saying that 'texts

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