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Chapter 3 - Resurrecting Ovid

from Part I - Responding to Exile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2025

Rebecca Menmuir
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Chapter 3 examines the consanguinity of Ovid’s two bodies, or corpora: his body of work (his textual corpus) and his physical body, which here represents his living body, corpse, tomb and biographical life. Medieval commentators took great interest in the relationship between Ovid’s bodies, responding diversely to the opportunities – and challenges – posed by Ovid’s insistent focus on the relationship. Their responses illuminate the mechanisms by which Ovid was transformed from an immoral, salacious poet to a moral, edifying one. A surprising element of that metamorphosis is that the pagan Ovid became a justifiably Christian poet for the medieval age. The chapter discusses Ovid’s presentation of his corpora in the exile poetry and the medieval obsession with Ovid’s tomb, before focusing on three medieval case studies: the Nolo Pater Noster anecdote, a medieval Latin narrative where two clerics are visited by the spirit of Ovid; Guillaume de Deguileville’s Le pèlerinage de la vie humaine and John Lydgate’s English rendering of the text, The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, where a figure on pilgrimage encounters Ovid’s exilic revenant; and Christine de Pizan’s Le livre de la cité des dames, in which Ovid is resurrected only to be castrated.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Resurrecting Ovid
  • Rebecca Menmuir, University of Oxford
  • Book: Medieval Responses to Ovid's Exile
  • Online publication: 27 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009553940.004
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  • Resurrecting Ovid
  • Rebecca Menmuir, University of Oxford
  • Book: Medieval Responses to Ovid's Exile
  • Online publication: 27 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009553940.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Resurrecting Ovid
  • Rebecca Menmuir, University of Oxford
  • Book: Medieval Responses to Ovid's Exile
  • Online publication: 27 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009553940.004
Available formats
×