Hello,
This is my first blog post since beginning my summer research project on Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto 1.1.2, and I am beginning my fourth week of reading and writing. I began my study by obtaining a copy of the recent English commentary on the first book of the ex Ponto and read through the letter in Latin. It was fun to do this, as I had just finished an intensive intermediate level class at Georgetown in Latin and my reading ability skyrocketed during the three weeks of the class. After finishing reading the letter and taking initial notes on the work, I began a long process of going through the work line by line and making comments and analyses on my way through it. To this end, I referenced Gaertner’s commentary while concurrently reading Janet Altman’s book Epistularity: Approaches to a Form, which is the fundamental work on thinking about and analyzing epistolary works. Although Altman’s study is grounded in the 18th century epistolary novel, her methodologies are applicable to any letter writing. In addition to these two works, I read several articles on other letters in the exile poetry to see what features scholars have been focusing on recently in the ex Ponto. I’ve also been reading chapters here and there in books ranging in topic from epistolarity in roman and greek literature to Ovidian studies to thinking about death in ancient Rome.
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