Multifaceted Amor: the figure of Cupid in Ovids Remedia Amoris.

• Grant number: 24/20495-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Languages
• Principal Investigator: Isabella Tardin Cardoso
• Grantee: José Carlos Vicentini Moura
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the complex and multifaceted figure of Amor in Ovid's poem Remedia Amoris (43 BCE - 18 CE). The Remedia constitutes the final work of the first phase of Ovid's oeuvre, which is entirely devoted to the theme of erotic love treated through the canons of Roman and Hellenistic elegiac poetry. In the Ars Amatoria, a poem that occupies the chronological center of this first phase, the poet blends the elegiac genre with the didactic, presenting his readers with a manual on how to love. However, several years later, in 1 CE, Ovid publishes the Remedia, which, apparently contradicting the Ars, now aims to teach readers how to cure themselves of a harmful love. As could be expected, the figure of Cupid or Love is present throughout the poet's entire first phase of production; but particularly in the Remedia, as the poet intends to provide the "remedies" for love, the image of the deity takes on clearly negative contours. This raises several questions regarding the interpretation of this work: Is Ovid rejecting his entire elegiac past with the Remedia? If not, is he deceiving his readers by promising something he cannot fulfill? Assuming the hypothesis that Ovid is neither rejecting his previous work nor misleading his readers in this regard, I intend to investigate the figure of the god Cupid in his various appearances in the poem, proposing it as a key point for understanding the Remedia. To do so, I will adopt an intertextual methodology and analyze the epithets and adjectives the deity receives, considering them from the standpoint of philology and ancient literary tradition, in order to assess their possible effects of meaning on the Ovidian reader in light of fundamental and more recent studies on the themes and work.