Ovid and the tradition of exile elegy

The purpose of this dissertation is to establish a tradition of exile elegy that existed hundreds of years before Ovid wrote his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto near the beginning of the modern era. Its central thesis is that there was a separate strain of exile elegy in antiquity, distinct from other kinds of elegy such as love elegy or aetiological elegy. In exile elegy, the poetic narrator is in exile, and unceasingly laments his separation from his wife or mistress. Along with this basic premise comes a number of secondary thematic elements, or topoi , which recur frequently in exile elegy and appear to be unique to it. The existence of these systematically recurring elements, together with the existence of formal constraints such as the elegiac meter, suggests that exile elegy deserves full status as an independent literary genre. This dissertation attempts to define that genre more closely, using Ovid's exile poetry as a base-line because the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto represent the fullest corpus of such poetry that we possess, and so provide the widest basis for comparison. This dissertation turns on its head the normal reading of the exile poetry as Ovid's own invention: a spontaneous poetic response to an unexpected relegation at the hands of Augustus. It emerges that every important aspect of the Tristia and the Epistulae ex Ponto is determined by the centuries long tradition behind those poems: Ovid's separation from his wife, his supposed inability to write poetry, and even the place of Ovid's exile. Yet since these things are demanded by the literary tradition, it is entirely uncertain whether they have any basis in reality, or whether Ovid was compelled to invent fictitious events to suit the genre in which he was writing, as he demonstrably did throughout his career. The very reality of Ovid's exile, which is supported by no other evidence, may be called into question, but this dissertation should at least point to the need for a serious reassessment of the sources of Ovid's exile poetry.