Critically comment on Ovid as a love poet from your reading of poems in Amores.Give suitable examples.

Publius Ovidius Naso was born in 43 BC, in Sulmo (modern Sulmona), in the rugged mountains of the Abruzzi about a hundred miles from Rome. His family, which must have been locally prominent and relatively wealthy, were Roman citizens of equestrian rank and seem to have intended Ovid for a political career in Rome. Ovid was a conspicuous success as a student of rhetoric at Rome, went on a tour of Greece, and held at least one minor magistracy in Rome before turning to poetry as a full-time occupation.

―Amores‖ (―Loves‖ or ―Amours‖) is a collection of 49 elegies by the Roman lyric poet Ovid. It was his first completed book of poetry, published in five volumes (later reduced to three) in 16 BCE or earlier. The poems, some of them quite graphic, portray the evolution of an affair with a married woman named Corinna. Originally, the ―Amores‖ was a five-book collection of love poetry, first published in 16 BCE. Ovid later revised this layout, reducing it to the surviving, extant collection of three books, including some additional poems written as late as 1 CE. Book 1 contains 15 elegiac love poems about various aspects of love and eroticism, Book 2 contains 19 elegies and Book 3 a further 15.

Most of the ―Amores‖ are distinctly tongue-in-cheek, and, while Ovid largely adheres to standard elegiac themes as previously treated by the likes of the poets Tibullus and Propertius (such as the ―exclusus amator or locked-out lover, for example), he often approaches them in a subversive and humorous way, with common motifs and devices being exaggerated to the point of absurdity. He also portrays himself as romantically capable, rather than emotionally struck down by love like Propertius, whose poetry often portrays the lover as under the foot of his love. Ovid also takes some risks such as openly writing about adultery, which was rendered illegal by Augustus‘ marriage law reforms of 18 BCE.

Like many other poets before him, Ovid‘s poems in the ―Amores‖ often centre on a romantic affair between the poet and his ―girl‖, in his case named Corinna. This Corinna is unlikely to have really lived, (especially as her character seems to change with great regularity), but is merely Ovid‗s poetical creation, a generalized motif of Roman mistresses, loosely based on a Greek poet of the same name (the name Corinna may also have been a typically Ovidian pun on the Greek word for maiden, ―kore‖).