BMCR 2009.04.47: Lacki on Ohrman, Varying Virtue. Mythological Paragons of Wifely Virtues in Roman Elegy. Studia Graeca et Latina Lundensia, 15

Magdalena Oehrman, Varying Virtue. Mythological Paragons of Wifely
Virtues in Roman Elegy. Studia Graeca et Latina Lundensia, 15.  Lund:
Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, 2008.  Pp. 218
(pb).  ISBN 978-91-628-7394-3.

Reviewed by Glenn C. Lacki, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford
([email protected])
Word count:  2248 words
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Varying Virtue is the pre-viva publication of Oehrman's doctoral
thesis, printed  by the author's home university of Lund.[[1]] The
thesis is composed primarily of close readings of discrete references
within Roman elegy (especially Ovid) to the mythological characters
Penelope, Laodamia, Andromache, Alcestis, and Euadne.  Among other
things, the work therefore represents an addition to the burgeoning
field of studies of exemplification in Latin poetry.  Its goal, in
brief, is to demonstrate how an external author (such as Ovid) exploits
these familiar mythological females in such a way as to shape the
reader's perception of and reaction to his poetry's internal
narrator(s) and to the genre of elegy itself.  Published prior to
rigorous review, defence, and post-defence revision, however, mistakes
(both typographical and more serious) are many.[[2]]  As a result, the
overall impression conveyed by the work -- that is, of a text which may
have been publishable after thorough revision and expansion, but which
instead has simply been published as is -- is perhaps to be expected.
Nevertheless, the dissertation does have some quality insights to
impart to Latinists specialising in Augustan poetry, and particularly
to those who study Ovid or Propertius; Tibullan critics seeking
illumination I fear will feel somewhat short-shrifted.

Opening with a brief introduction, Oehrman then subdivides her material
into four chapters of substance ('Canonical' Elegy; Ovid's Heroides;
Erotodidactic Elegy; Ovid's Exile Poetry) followed by a crisp
conclusion and a serviceably concise appendix that supplies some
background information on the mythological heroines in question.
Unlike the conclusion's rather excellent synthesis of the foregoing
thesis and its implications, the introduction bears sure signs of
post-partum composition, and spends more of its time summarising
conclusions to be reached in the thesis (a.k.a. 'repeating the
abstract' and 'giving the game away') than it does laying a solid
methodological framework for the project as a whole.  What does become
clear, at least, is that the subsequent analysis will be largely
intertextual and narratological, and concerned throughout with issues
of genre and gender.  Oehrman (in my opinion rightly) views separate
references to individual mythological characters within elegy as
interdependent, cumulative with one another as well as with the
literary tradition that serves as their backdrop (13).  One other major
point highlighted here which does become a recurring (if only
occasionally persuasive) argument throughout the book is how comparison
of the elegiac beloved to these 'paragons of virtue' often implies
unfortunate analogies between the elegiac narrator and these paragons'
male counterparts, sometimes casting an ironic or even comical light
upon the narrator and thereby subverting his authority and reliability,
as well as those of the elegiac Gegenwelt he expounds.

I am more sceptical, however, when Oehrman queries "the aims and
objectives of the genre" (13), and particularly about the mode in which
she does so.  She first posits that "[b]y detracting from the
credibility of the opposing alternative [i.e., the worldview proposed
by the elegiac narrator], elegy comes ultimately to confirm the values
of traditional Roman society" (15), a sensible (if at this stage still
nebulous) hypothesis.  She severely cripples this train of thought with
a later claim, however, suggesting (19) "that we understand elegy as a
genre more concerned with sophisticated literary play and allusion, as
well as with humour, than with either the depiction of a real
relationship or with a wish for real changes in Roman society."  We
must ask, however, at what expense? And more, is this good enough?  I
am reminded of the debate over Corinna's parrot (Am. 2.6); in the
course of it, Leslie Cahoon argued that "[r]ecent scholarly concerns
with generic constraints and programmatic themes often tend to
eliminate all other themes as insignificant or nonexistent. Ovid's
poetry in particular is, in such treatments, apparently only about
itself, about its self-conscious relationship to its predecessors,
about its own erudition and ingenuity in manipulating its sources, and,
by implication, delightfully suggestive of, if not actually about, the
erudition and ingenuity of the critic who detects such
manipulations."[[3]]  Ultimately Cahoon persuades that no, this is not
good enough, and if we are to continue reading this poetry then surely
it must have some significance ethical, moral, or otherwise -- some
meaning beyond the aesthetic, beyond poetics, and beyond the fun-filled
philological.  Maintenance of the status quo represents just as earnest
and noteworthy a social agenda for elegy as any 'subversive' or
revolutionary desire for change, yet even while rightly proposing it as
a possibility Oehrman seems to diminish it by trammelling the nature
and belittling the involvements of the genre.  Intentional or no -- and
no matter how much I would like simply to chalk the problem up to the
clearly precipitate penning of the introduction --  the degree to which
these claims are at loggerheads is problematic for Oehrman's overall
thesis.

In her first full chapter, Oehrman discusses a number of poems from the
Propertian oeuvre (1.3, 15, 19; 2.6, 9, 20; 3.12, 13; and 4.8), with a
nod to Tibullus (1.3) and a brief foray into Ovid's Amores (2.18 and
3.4), setting the scene for her later chapters which focus almost
entirely on Ovid.  The selection is intended to characterise what
Oehrman rather questionably dubs 'Canonical Elegy'.  (Even by the end
of the thesis I remained unconvinced of the cogency of the term,
especially in light of the little space devoted to discussion of
Tibullus, et sim.)  This is also, it must be said, one of the more
pessimistic chapters on Augustan poetry I for one have had the mixed
pleasure and displeasure -- both, and in equal quantities -- of
reading.  (With a good deal of justification it might be bleakly
subtitled 'Taking the Romance out of Roman Elegy'...)  In particular, I
suspect that Oehrman's interpretations of Propertius, at times quite
perceptive and at others just downright depressing, will prove
especially polarising.

While I find myself hard-pressed to disagree, for instance, with what I
take as the crowning argument of this first chapter, namely that
"infidelity is in fact part of the foundations of the genre.
Subsequently, marital fidelity cannot be comfortably incorporated in
the elegiac world" (64), we arrive at this conclusion by way of a
demoralising undercurrent of unpersuasive over-reading which mars the
chapter and poses no small cause for concern.  (Arguably, Oehrman's
primary intent in the thesis is over-reading, but a little
self-consciousness towards that enterprise could have gone a long way
here!)  Oehrman aims to convince us that when the elegiac narrator
makes a comparison between his puella and a virtuous mythological
heroine, we should be wary not only of what he is actually saying about
her, but also of what it says about him, intentionally or otherwise.
And in her defence this suggestion, per se -- cautious and sensible as
it is -- is hard to refute.  It is always right to question; so for
instance when the narrator of Propertius 2.6/7 informs the cheating
Cynthia that nos uxor numquam, numquam seducet amica: / semper amica
mihi, semper et uxor eris (2.6.41-2), Oehrman is perfectly right to
suggest (38) that he may in fact be hinting at (and taunting Cynthia
with) his own past infidelities, real or imagined.  At the very least
this is hardly inconceivable.  But on the other hand, the narrator of
Propertius 2.20 does not "figure himself as an adulterer and a rapist"
by means of his mythological analogies (pace Oehrman, 47) -- he in fact
highlights a pack of ne'er-do-wells to show just how unlike all of them
he has been, and by extension how unreasonable Cynthia is being!  Nor
can I agree with Oehrman's assessment (50-3) that the narrator of
Propertius 1.19 recognises all along that his and Cynthia's love cannot
last beyond the bounds of death, when it seems clear to me (and call me
a romantic if you must) that part of the point here is the
unknowability, for the narrator, of what exists beyond that boundary.
What he offers, then, is the best he can, saying that even if all he
can do is try (in vain) to sate himself with touching Cynthia with
falsis palmis then that is enough for him -- his love, he claims, is
strong enough to last even past the point where its demonstrations in
physical form are no longer possible.[[4]]  To get down to brass tacks,
then, perhaps infidelity in all its forms really is part of the
foundations of the genre: part of being faithless, after all, is an
inability to put any reliance whatsoever in the words of your lover!
But is Oehrman implying that Ovid has inscribed this brand of
'infidelity' and suspicion into his poetry (and more, is this really
the way to go about exposing it?), or is it simply Oehrman's own mode
of analysis that manifests such a transgressive distrust?  Then again,
we could put it more simply, and just say that if this is really the
pernickety and cavilling fashion in which Cynthia regularly read her
amator's professions of undying love, little wonder their relationship
was so fraught!

Oehrman's second chapter, which concerns Ovid's Heroides and in
particular Her. 1 and 13, the letters of Penelope and Laodamia,
contains some of the book's better moments.  In it, Oehrman offers
interesting thoughts not only on these two Heroides, but on the
collection as a whole.  High points include her reading of these
characters as "vehicles for a metapoetic discussion of what the elegiac
world view entails" (67); her entire discussion of Her. 1.31-6 and
ekphrasis (70-3); her interpretations of the problematic gender
role-swapping that takes place as these women cast themselves in the
guise of elegiac (male?) narrators and their male counterparts as
elegiac 'puellae'; and her studied understanding of the interplay of
generic form and content which brings her to posit elegy's ultimate
inability to alter or transform the gospel of 'loftier', time-honoured
epic (104).  The interested reader will find here much of worth, and
some fresh and exciting insights into an understudied set of Ovidian
poems.

The third chapter carries the theme of the unreliable narrator over to
erotodidactic elegy, with understandable emphasis on the Ars amatoria.
Here, she argues that it is also in the praeceptor amoris's use of
mythological examples of wifely virtues that we can locate the signs of
a lack of narratorial control.  Her intertextual and narratological
reasoning throughout the chapter is usually admirable, sometimes bold,
but not always primed to convince, with arguments ranging from the
truly excellent (e.g., her notes, 121-2, on comparing the use of
Tecmessa at Ars 3.517ff. to her speech in Sophocles's Aias as an
intertext concerning the early parts of her life) to the overly
tortuous (e.g., her points, 123-4, on the praeceptor's failing
credibility as supposedly evinced by his use of Andromache), and
occasionally to the patently absurd (e.g., lengthy, superfluous, and
implausible discussions of why Andromache is tall, 132-5, and why
Laodamia has her hair styled a certain way, 145-8).  (As for why
Andromache's tall, I'm tempted to blame the walls of Troy for adding a
few inches...  Now there's a joke I wouldn't put past Ovid.)

If I were to recommend the thesis on a single chapter alone, it would
have to be Oehrman's fourth and final one.  The chapter revolves around
Ovid's exile poetry, ranging widely and effectively across both the
Tristia and the ex Ponto, with particular attention given to Tr. 1.6,
2, 4.3, 5.5, and 5.14, and to Pont. 3.1.  Some of her initial claims
for the chapter -- namely, ". . .to show that the Ars is indeed a
highly important intertext for Ovid's exile poetry, and that the exile
corpus does reflect retrospectively on the aims of Ovid's amatory
poetry" (152) -- do not inspire confidence, as they seem more data than
desiderata in studies of Ovid's late offerings.  Her more specific
goals far outstrip these overly general ones, however, and what stand
out most piquantly here are rather Oehrman's first-class insights,
throughout the chapter, concerning the 'wife' of 'Ovid' (and I fully
agree with her inverted commas on both counts), as well as her
persuasive argument that the reader's familiarity with the Ars is
constantly (and not untroublingly) (re)inscribed in the exile poetry by
way of the exilic narrator's references to these five 'paragons'.  In
fact, on the subject of 'Ovid's wife', a great deal of Oehrman's
material here -- how the narrator sets his wife apart from potential
readers of the Ars through intertextuality, and even on the level of
language (161); how Ovid uses generic conventions to represent or
metaphorise the separation of the narrator, caught inside elegy, from
his wife, caught inside tragedy and epic (164); and so on -- is some of
the best that I have seen written.   Excellent and artful close
readings abound throughout, and most of the better arguments Oehrman
has posed in the course of her text come together here very nicely.

The final, concluding chapter of the book provides, as I mentioned, a
thoroughgoing recapitulation of what has come before.  Oehrman rightly
highlights what I would agree is one of the primary strengths of her
thesis: that by means of her close-readings of references to these five
'paragons of wifely virtues' across the corpus of Ovidian poetry, she
has been able to demonstrate substantively the lap-jointed nature of
Ovidian cross-textual exemplification.  Not all of her arguments will
convince, and there is a great deal of doctoral-schmoctoral repetition
and surplus in evidence, but there is also wealth here, for those
willing to do a bit of digging and slogging.


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Notes:


1.   The reviewer apologises to the author and editors for this
review's reprehensibly tardy submission.

2.   A complete list of corrigenda has been forwarded to the author and
need not be repeated here.  For the purposes of this review, I will
mention only those points which might affect a reader's interpretation,
or the overall readability, of the text; viz.:

p. 9 -- In the table of contents, section header 'I.I' instead reads
'II.I.'; on a related note, there is considerable inconsistency
(passim) in section references (e.g., 'I.I' in TOC and 'I.i' at p. 11,
n. 2), which becomes increasingly distracting as further subsections
are added ('II.II.ii.ii', and so on).  p. 17 -- There is some critical
element of sense missed out of the sentence beginning 'In the
introduction to Chapter One...'; the sentence, however, is repeated and
corrected on p. 22, and yet again on p. 61, n. 126 (a repetition which
in this case proves useful, though in principle should perhaps be
avoided).  p. 25, n. 9 (and passim) -- References to Boyd 2002 Brill's
Companion to Ovid are made as 'Weiden Boyd 2002', though the
bibliographical entry is listed under 'Boyd'.  p. 28 -- For 'nocturna
dolo' read 'nocturno dolo'.  p. 41 (in translation of Prop. 1.15; and
again on p. 42) -- Translation of quarum nulla as 'neither of these'
should read 'none of these'.  p. 114 -- For 'counterpart' read
'counterpoint'.  p. 115 -- 'to Penelope from Dido' should read 'to Dido
from Penelope'.  p. 119 (and again on p. 120) -- Oehrman's translation
of lascivi amores as 'love for fun' may seem misleading: 'love for the
fun of it' (vel sim.) might be more accurate and comprehensible.  p.
126 -- Major misprinting of section heading, which should read 'III.II'
but instead reads 'III.III.IV' and is printed well off-centre.  p. 185
-- In a translation of Pont. 3.1.119ff., Oehrman translates Aeetae as
'Aeteon', but this should in fact read 'Aee+tes';  further, nurus
Aegypti is not 'the Egyptian wife' but actually 'a daughter-in-law of
Aegyptus', and so Oehrman's subsequent argument that "they are
described as barbarians; this is one possible inference of the term
Aegypti used of the Danaid" is similarly misguided.

3.   L. Cahoon CJ 86.4 (1991): 368-76, quotation from 369.  The
interested should see especially Cahoon's first article on the subject,
an early exercise in narratological studies of Roman elegy that would
have proved instructive for some of Oehrman's big-picture hypotheses,
and which sparked the debate over the parrot: CJ 80.1 (1984): 27-35.
For the counterarguments, see especially: B. W. Boyd CJ 82 (1987):
199-207; K. S. Myers EMC 34 (1990): 367-74).

4.   Arguably, the more worrying element of the Propertian narrator's
scenario in 1.19 comes if we follow his imago line of thought (1.19.11:
illic quidquid ero, semper tua dicar imago) to its logical conclusion:
Laodamia's imago of Protesilaus, after all, turned out not to be enough
to sate her desires, and in the end she killed herself (thus joining
him, and reuniting them, in death) anyway!  Is the narrator suggesting
that he hopes Cynthia will kill herself in order to follow him in
death?  Such a thought might be reinforced by the important line
(1.19.12) which follows: traicit et fati litora magnus amor.  Exactly
whose love, we might rightly wonder, is intended here to traverse the
shores of death -- and in which direction?  In this case, nevertheless,
the worst we could accuse the narrator of being is selfish in his love
-- hardly the doubter and double-dealer Oehrman would make him.