Given that some of its humor is no longer funny for modern readers, what is the pedagogical value of humor in Ovid’s Art of Love today? In particular, portions of the poem depicting and even endorsing rape pose challenges for teachers who wish to acknowledge and share Ovid’s humor in Art of Love with their students. By situating portions of the Art of Love that are especially troubling for modern readers in the broader context of the poem’s dominant comic mode, I hope to show how our modern disquiet over those parts of the poem addressing rape can point us productively toward critiques inherent in Ovid’s poem itself.
Author: Meg Lamont
Meg Lamont is Director of Instruction at Stanford Online High School (SOHS), an independent school serving students in grades 7-12 through real-time, seminar-style classes that meet online. SOHS is a part of Stanford University. Before that, she was an Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina State University, where she specialized in medieval literature. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 2007.