Lethaeus Amor: Love and Memory in Latin Elegy by Ellen M. Lee

251 Pages·2016·1.34 MB·English

Lethaeus Amor: Love and Memory in Latin Elegy
by

Ellen M. Lee

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Classical Studies)
in the University of Michigan
2016

Doctoral Committee:
Associate Professor Basil J. Dufallo, Chair
Associate Professor Ruth R. Caston
Professor Peggy S. McCracken
Professor David S. Potter
Professor Ruth S. Scodel
© Ellen M. Lee 2016
DEDICATION

in matris meae memoriam

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the following people for helping me achieve this
great goal, as well as so many smaller ones along the way:
My committee, for your guidance and support, for all the time spent on drafts, meetings, emails,
and the varied tasks of advising. Among many other things: Ruth Caston, for your kind advice
and encouragement; Basil Dufallo, for always challenging me to exceed my own expectations;
Peggy McCracken, for your inexhaustible enthusiasm; David Potter, for encouraging me to see
the bigger picture beyond the poetry; and Ruth Scodel, for your enduring patience, even when I
am at my most clueless.
My cohort, Clara Bosak-Schroeder, Harriet Fertik, and Matthew Newman, for being the constant
buoys that have kept me afloat these many years. I would be sunk without you.
The UM Classical Studies community, whose warm and encouraging members have always
offered me a soft place to land. Special thanks to Michelle Biggs, Sara Forsdyke, and Arthur
Verhoogt, for listening to problems large and small with sympathy (and, often, a solution).
The Classical Studies Dissertators’ Workshop and Support Groups, especially Kate Allen, Nick
Geller, Tim Hart, Tiggy McLaughlin, Jacqui Pincus, and Amy Pistone, for letting me borrow
your eyes over many drafts and bend your ears over many, many cups of coffee.
My family, for keeping the home fires burning, while I’m off pursuing my dream.
Evan, my partner in everything, for sustaining me through it all. Words aren’t enough.

Thank you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION …………………………………………………………………............................... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………………………......... iii

ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………….............................. v

INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………….. 1

CHAPTER ONE:
Memento Mori: Love, Death, and Memory in Love Elegy …………………………………. 28

CHAPTER TWO:
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Forgetting Roma and Amor in the City and Abroad ………... 71

CHAPTER THREE:
Ugliness in the Eye of the Beholder: False Memories and the Female Body …………….. 108

CHAPTER FOUR:
Remedia (Re)members Heroides: Embodiment and Epistolarity ………………………… 141

CHAPTER FIVE:
Receiving, Rescripting: Poetic Memory and Forgetting in Remedia Amoris ……………. 182

CONCLUSIONS ………………………………………………………………………………… 227

BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………….. 230

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ABSTRACT
This dissertation considers the connection between love and memory (or, as often,
forgetting) in Roman elegiac poetry, through the lens of Ovid’s Remedia Amoris (Cures for
Love). I argue that, by writing Remedia, the last poem in the corpus of Latin love elegy, as an
‘art of forgetting’ which purports to aid the unlucky lover by teaching him to forget love, Ovid
underscores the significance of memory in the elegiac genre. By telling readers how to forget,
Ovid reveals how previous poets, including himself, taught readers how to remember.
I investigate the connection between love and memory in elegy by pinpointing elegiac
modes of amorous memory production. My method of analysis extracts certain pieces of advice
(praecepta) given by the didactic narrator of Remedia, who guides the reader to rid himself of
love. Even as his purportedly curative precepts inevitably fail, they point to elegiac strategies for
memory production. My chapters treat these methods of creating memory thematically, each
outlining a different piece of advice for forgetting, paired with a corresponding strategy for
memory production in the elegiac genre: strategies for memorialization after death (Chapter 1);
strategies for rescripting the localized memory of love (Chapter 2); strategies for creating false
memories of the beloved (Chapter 3); women’s strategies for epistolary memory production
(Chapter 4); and strategies for scripting poetic memory through allusion and tropes (Chapter 5). I
propose that Remedia offers a guide for the reader of elegy, underscoring the importance of these
strategies of memory production for the program of the elegiac genre.
In addition to considering how the advice Ovid gives recalls his own previous works (the
Amores, Ars Amatoria, and Heroides), I explore how Ovid’s Remedia receives the works of his
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poetic predecessors, including Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and even Homer. To investigate the
broader cultural milieu of Roman memorialization and mnemotechnics, I utilize frameworks
from social, poetic, and cognitive memory studies.

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INTRODUCTION

Lethean Love: Forgetting Elegiac Love in Remedia
In Remedia, the Ovidian praeceptor purports to teach his student, a desperate lover, to
fall out of love. In a passage about two-thirds of the way through the poem, he establishes his
authority as a teacher by laying claim to a connection with the divine, as he imparts hope for a
supernatural end to the student-lover’s suffering:
est prope Collinam templum venerabile Portam;
(inposuit templo nomina celsus Eryx);
est illic Lethaeus Amor, qui pectora sanat
inque suas gelidam lampadas addit aquam.
illic et iuvenes votis oblivia poscunt,
et si qua est duro capta puella viro.
is mihi sic dixit (dubito, verusne Cupido
an somnus fuerit: sed puto, somnus erat):
“o qui sollicitos modo das, modo demis amores,
adice praeceptis hoc quoque, Naso, tuis...” (Rem. 549-558)
(Near the Colline Gate, there is a venerable temple (lofty Eryx has put a name to it);
Lethean Love is there, who heals the heart and pours cool water upon his own flames.
And there young men seek forgetfulness by their prayers, as well as any girl who has
been taken in by a harsh lover. Thus he spoke to me (I am in doubt whether it was really
Cupid or a dream, but I think it was a dream): “O you who who give and take away
anxious love, add this, too, Naso, to your precepts...”)
1
Here, the praeceptor explicitly cites forgetfulness as the cure for love, tying his remedia to the
effects of the river Lethe. As he invents a new cult of the god Amor and plays with the traditional
topos of theophany, he recalls poetic conventions and religious traditions, bending these weighty
themes to his own rhetorical purpose, the cure for love. Most significantly for the present study,
this passage, by highlighting the role of forgetting, in fact demonstrates the importance of
memory in elegy. In this dissertation, I read Remedia as an ‘art of forgetting,’1 a handbook on
how to forget the love affair. If, according to the Ovidian praeceptor’s argument, love can only
be tempered by the cool waters of Lethe that bring on forgetfulness, then remembering must be
the main source of fuel for the fires of elegiac love. The link between love and memory in
Remedia recalls a similar thread connecting love and memory throughout love poetry of the late
republic and early principate.
In this inquiry, I investigate the connection between love and memory in Latin elegy by
pinpointing elegiac modes of amorous memory production. Within the fiction of the elegiac love
affair, the memory of love is produced when a character (the poet-lover, for example) makes an
effort to ensure that some aspect of the love affair (e.g., his undying devotion) will be
remembered. The characters of elegy, as well as the elegist himself, produce memory through a
variety of strategies, which I explore throughout this dissertation. I propose that Remedia offers a
guide for the reader of elegy, underscoring the importance of these strategies of memory
production for the program of elegy. By writing Remedia as an ‘art of forgetting’ in which his
purportedly curative precepts inevitably fail, Ovid points at elegiac strategies for memory
production. By instructing readers to forget, Ovid points out how previous poetry taught readers
to remember.

1 Following others, especially Hardie (2006).
2
Each of my chapters outlines a different strategy for the production of memory in elegy. My
method of analysis extracts certain pieces of advice (praecepta) given by the narrator of
Remedia, who guides the reader to rid himself of love; I compare this advice to previous love
poetry, including that of Ovid himself, to determine how remembering and forgetting function
within the values of Latin love elegy. Ovid’s interaction with the mnemonic methods of
individual characters, as well as those of the elegists themselves, complicate the role of memory
in elegy and in Roman culture writ large. I consider how the advice Ovid gives recalls his own
previous works (Ars Amatoria, Amores, and Heroides), the works of his poetic predecessors
(including Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and even Homer), and the broader cultural milieu of
Roman memorialization and mnemotechnics, utilizing frameworks from the studies of social,
poetic, and cognitive memory.
What is memory?
Memory is a notoriously broad concept, both in the ancient world and today. In English,
the word ‘memory’ can mark cognitive mental processes, individuals’ remembrances of the past,
the memorialization of the dead, public ceremonies celebrating the past, or textual
reminiscences.2 Appeals to memory can include calls to action (‘Remember the Alamo!’), threats
or warnings (‘Remember what happened last time?’), and even greetings (‘Remember me to
Herald Square!’), and they elicit a variety of responses, from internal, passive mindfulness to
external, active efforts. ‘Memoria’ in Latin has an equally wide range of connotations. Walter
(2004) outlines memoria’s “semantische Facetten,” noting that the term can indicate mental
function, memory recall, historiography and history, written and non-written media that recalls
the past, the traditions of the mos maiorium, burial and mourning practices, and the ‘art of

2 Cf. Fentress and Wickham (1992), x.
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