Loving Writing / Ovid’s Amores (Cambridge, 2019) offers a fresh reading of the Amores centered on the aggressive, opportunistic, pleasure-seeking character — the poet-lover of the collection, called Naso. Resisting the scholarly tendency to segregate the poet from the lover, Ellen Oliensis (Classics and Comparative Literature) teases out the affiliations between Naso's most “poetic” performances and his seamy erotic adventures, showing that his need to write the script of his own subjection corresponds with other features of his generally masochistic profile.

Oliensis is joined by Timothy Hampton (Comparative Literature and French; Townsend Center director). This event will be presented live online.