Content area
Full Text
Hejduk ( J.D. ) (trans.) The Offense of Love. Ovid: Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, and Tristia 2 . Pp. xviii + 268. Madison, WI and London : The University of Wisconsin Press , 2014. Paper, US$19.95. ISBN: 978-0-299-30204-7 .
Notices
H.'s deft new translation of Ovid includes the Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris and Tristia 2, the last a potential outlier in a collection that stretches over 3,700 verses. The book's title aims to clarify the link among the poems by suggesting that they all relate to love - or, rather, to sex - and its potential to cause offence. This seems plausible, but only in moving through the texts and the accompanying notes does one see the rich interconnectedness here, and H. deserves praise for bringing these poems together in a reliable and eminently readable translation.
The obvious connection between the Ars and Remedia is amor: in both poems the praeceptor amoris is strenuously engaged in dispensing advice, now on modes of seduction, now on cures for love. Another connection is made explicitly in Tristia 2 (and elsewhere in the exile poetry, Tr. 1.1.67-8; 2.212, 345-7, 539-46; 5.12.67-8; Pont. 2.9.75-6), where Ovid identifies the Ars