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

by Marek Tue Kretschmer

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9782503587035
Publisher:	Brepols Publishers
Publication date:	02/13/2020
Series:	Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin , #14
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Marek Thue Kretschmer is Professor of Medieval Latin Literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is the author of Rewriting Roman History in the Middle Ages (2007), editor of La typologie biblique comme forme de pensée dans l'historiographie médiévale (2014) and has published widely on the reception of the Latin classics, notably on the medieval reception of Ovid.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9

Abbreviations 11

Introduction 13

Edition and Translation 25

Commentary 45

Caveat lector 45

Explanation of the Scale 46

The minus-sign (Weakening Factors) 46

The Asterisk-sign 47

Introductory Remark on VE₁-36 47

Verse by Verse Commentary 51

The poet's meeting with the Trojan maiden (1-36) 51

Invitation to enjoy the shade or to bathe (37-48) 58

Invitation to dinner (49-90) 60

The arts (91-98) 67

Meadows, farms, and castles (99-110) 68

Couches and beds (111-46) 68

The imperial tent (147-68) 73

The city's inhabitants are ready to serve (169-80) 76

The city's people and merchandise, guilds, artists, and soldiers (181-228) 77

The palace with its bedrooms and suggestive pictures (229-44) 85

The poet's self-praise (245-54) 90

Transition (255-56) 92

Descriptio puellae (257-80) 92

Transition (281-82) 98

The poet's eternal glory (283-300) 98

Appendix 1 Sources of Inspiration 101

Classical Latin Poetry 103

Ovid 103

Vergil 109

Juvenal 111

Lucan 112

Martial 113

Statius 115

Horace 115

Ilias Latina 116

Propertius 116

Seneca 116

Tibullus 116

Canticum Canticorum 117

Late Latin Poetry 119

Quod natum Phoebus 119

Prudentius 119

Venantius Fortunatus 119

Maximianus 120

Medieval Latin Poetry 121

Appendix 2 The Versus Eporedienses and the Dawn of the Twelfth Century 122

Wenric of Trier's Confictus ovis et lini 123

The Poet of Asti's Novus Avianus 124

Godfrey of Reims 125

The Ovidian influence 126

The Muses and Dichterstolz/Überbietungstopos, Troy, and translatio 126

The "Orphic discourse" 127

Baudri of Bourgueil 129

Appendix 3 Similarities and Matches in Twelfth- and Thirteenth- Century Love Poetry 132

Z 49 (Dulcis arnica mea) 132

CR 26 (Si uera somnia) 134

Hugh Primas (1093-c. 1160) 134

Carmina Burana 135

De tribus puellis 138

Bruma grando glacies 138

Fidus amicus here 139

Bibliography 143

Primary Sources 143

Classical 143

Late Latin 144

Medieval 145

Secondary Sources 149

Index nominum 161

Index codicum 164

Index auctorum et carminum 165

Index locorum similium 170

Index locorum similium per ordinem auctorum et carminum digestus 174

Editorial Reviews

"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)

From the Publisher