Ovid's Intention in the Art Essay

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Though he achieves great comic effect with this, Ovid could also be underlining the importance of the following poem by his inclusion of such a large portion of the Roman pantheon. There is also explicit evidence that Ovid is not merely -- or at least not solely -- talking about lust in the poem, at one point addressing the reader as, "You...who search for the essence of lasting love" (Part II, line 9). Later on in the poem, when describing instant love -- or lust -- in the courts, he paints the lawyers as ridiculous characters, clearly signaling his feelings towards them.

The messages themselves are not hard to find once one begins looking for them. Throughout the poem, there is a violent, militaristic aspect to the description of male seduction -- the opening of Part III suggest one might find a lover on "Pompey's shady colonnade" -- a subtle reminder of the famous Roman general and military genius (Part III, line 1). This militaristic theme continues even more explicitly in the next part, which details finding a woman at a theatre. First, Ovid describes the search as a "hunt" -- quite predatory and violent, diminishing the power and rights of the women -- and then mentions the rape of the Sabines in a way that almost seems to blame the women for making a spectacle of themselves, as they do in the theatre (Part IV, line 1, 13-4). This could be interpreted as chauvinism on Ovid's part, but later on he refers to when a "boy wages war's un-boy-like agenda" -- a fairly tacit statement against militancy (Part VI, line 6).

The way in which the militant domination of men over women is so overblown in this piece, coupled with the subtle and explicit hints regarding Ovid's attitude towards needless militancy, suggests that Ovid wished to see a reevaluation of the way women were viewed and treated in his society.

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The extreme objectification described in the theater scene -- though told as though it were completely the women who designed things to be this way -- makes the speaker of the poem and the men who take him earnestly appear quite foolish. Rather than assume that Ovid meant this work to be accepted solely on the humor it has on the surface, it is far more likely that he was trying to say something about the way his world was operating and how he thought it ought to change. Satire must serve a purpose other than pure comedy, and though Ovid never makes his message as explicit as many other satirical works do, there are many hints that suggest the traditional male dominance over women was not appealing to Ovid's sensibilities.

Ovid's the Art of Love, though highly comic and an immensely enjoyable read, is clearly a work with some serious undertones, and not merely a frivolous work of jocular poetry. Ovid placed several explicit hints in the text regarding its importance -- his opening invocation of the gods and goddesses, his hope that the reader is looking for lasting love, and his ridicule of lawyers in lust all speak to the sincerity of his mission. In addition, the heavy association of males seducing females with military figures and actions must almost certainly be read in a satirical light; the references simply come too often otherwise. From Pompey's colonnade to the theatre to later statements directly about war, the poem is too full of military images for it….....

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