OVIDS ENZYKLOPÄDIE DER LIEBE: FORMEN DES EROS, REIHENFOLGE DER LIEBESGE-SCHICHTEN, GESCHICHTSPHILOSOPHIE UND METAPOETISCHE DICHTUNG IN DEN METAMORPHOSEN

Hösle acknowledges that this is only "a partial ordering principle" ("ein partielles Ordnungsprinzip") and "a material, not a formal criterion of organization" ("ein materiales, kein formales Gliedemngskriterium," 11). [...]it is not meant to replace but to complement other compositional principles previously identified by scholars and briefly highlighted here. After a thematic outline of the importance of love and art in Ovid's carmina amatoria, Hösle stresses the historical-philosophical dimension of the Metamorphoses (41, reacting to Schmidt's denial of any form of teleology within the poem)3 and looks at Ovid's judgment of his own times within his literary works. The author shows that, within the encyclopedic collection of love forms, the focus shifts from male to female desire, the use of violence is replaced by symmetrical and consensual love (finally a lifelong marriage), and "psychopathological" forms ("die Psychopathologie erotischer Begierde"; e.g., Medea, Scylla, Byblis, Myrrha, Phaedra, 168-169 and 246-247) are "[replaced] by the presentation of more positive relationships" ("[ersetzt] durch die Darstellung positiverer Beziehungen," 247).