Festina Lente: Progress and Delay in Ovid's Fasti

Abstract

‘Wait a minute.’Martin Amis, Time's ArrowWe start with a stop. In recent years, long pause has been taken for inquest into the narrative dynamics of ancient literature. How stories are told, by whom, in what order—these have become key questions of narratology, a discipline whose tools most critics would now keep somewhere in their kit. Narratological criticism of poetry has ‘naturally’ drifted towards poems of long narrative span (i.e. hexameter epics). Recently, however, the ‘smaller’ genres have been extended the benefits of narratological civilisation, particularly in the realm of temporality. To take a loaded and leading example, Latin love elegy has been well serviced by narratology of late; what was once considered a genre ‘unfit’ for narrative, let alone narratological study, is now a prime setting for both. But it surprised me that the recent volume Latin Elegy and Narratology all but neglected Ovid's most ‘narrative’ elegy of all: the Fasti. Such an editorial decision may have been motivated by the perception that the Fasti needs no reclamation as a narrative poem; at any rate, the volume's interests lie in the processes of ‘fragmentation’, the way that elegy claims its own non-narrativity as alternative. Whatever the reasoning, I felt that the Fasti's near-relegation from this fascinating volume was something of an oversight. Many of the concerns emerging from the chapters on ‘other’ elegy can be usefully transferred to the Fasti.

Rush Job: Slavery and Brevity in the Early Roman Principate

“…64 For time-conscious narration in the Fasti and the imperative to keep on calendrical track, see Geue (2010) Velleius here talks about the form of his work and his attendant narrative haste as a pressing external force like a wheel or a stream; something he is powerless to stop, something he 66 Translation mine.…”

“…For an excellent account of breuitas uerborum manifesting in Velleian 'pointed style' see Oakley (2020) 201. 4 For the dialectic between hurrying and tarrying in Ovid's Fasti see Geue (2010). 5 Geue (2010).…”

“…4 For the dialectic between hurrying and tarrying in Ovid's Fasti see Geue (2010). 5 Geue (2010). aesthetic programme of a universal history rubs shoulders with that of a Callimachean-Aratean calendar poem.…”

“…112-116; on the importance of praeteritio as master trope of the Fasti,Geue (2010) 116-18. 65 For common gerundive constructions like notandum est to justify inclusion of content in Velleius see 2.11, 42.1, 52.4, 67.1, 99.4, 103.4, 124.1 (see Woodman's comments ad 67.1).…”

“…64For time-conscious narration in the Fasti and the imperative to keep on calendrical track, see Geue (2010) 112–116; on the importance of praeteritio as master trope of the Fasti , Geue (2010) 116–18.…”