12th-century poetical debate, and the De vetula, a pseudo-Ovidian tale. More specifically,
it is through complex love metaphors that Ovid’s presence may be gauged in narratives
like the Old French Roman d’Énéas, an anonymous, free mid-12th-century adaptation of
Virgil’s Aeneid. In Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligés, both the psychological penetration of the
extended love analyses and the irony derive from Ovid’s elegiac poems. The same holds
true for a poignant text like Marie de France’s Guigemar, one of her brief lais that is
unquestionably suffused with Ovidian imagery.
Ovid’s daringly original poetry, at once cosmological in scope and trivial in grasp,
dominates western vernacular tradition. For Chaucer, he was “Venus’ Clerk”; the notion
of romantic love, which arises from the medieval idea of courtly love, goes back in large
part to the Roman poet’s conception of the mutually transforming power of this human
emotion. Ancient Ovidian stories, such as those of Pyramus and Thisbe, Narcissus, and
Philomela, help to establish the new narrative medieval genre in the vernacular: they
were adapted into Old French, then appeared in German, Dutch, Italian, and early English
versions. The vogue continued into Renaissance art and poetry.
While reworkings of Ovid’s multifaceted Metamorphoses began before the
Carolingian period, the most ambitious and elaborate treatment is found in two
anonymous French translations, which were then vigorously amplified into Christian
exegetical moralization, the Ovide moralisé. This 72,000-line poem, with its complex
web of allegorical interpretation, may be said to attempt a reconciliation of the
Metamorphoses with orthodox Christian doctrine. It is in this special dress that Ovid
reached Boccaccio, Chaucer, Gower, Christine de Pizan, and numerous other later poets.
Indeed, Pierre Bersuire, one of Ovid’s translators (from the Old French back into Latin),
calls the Metamorphoses a bible of pagan gods.
Raymond J.Cormier
[See also: ANTIQUITY, ROMANCES OF; OVIDE MORALISÉ; OVIDIAN TALES;
TRANSLATION]
Cormier, Raymond J., ed. and trans. Three Ovidian Tales of Love (Piramus et Tisbé, Narcisus et
Dané, and Philomena et Procné). New York: Garland, 1986.
Munari, Franco. Ovid im Mittelalter. Zurich: Artemis, 1960.
Rand, Edward Kennard. Ovid and His Influence. Boston: Jones, 1925.
OVIDE MORALISÉ. A poem of some 72,000 lines in octosyllabic couplets, composed between 1316 and
1328 by an anonymous cleric, probably a Franciscan. The language suggests that the
writer was of Burgundian origin. The poem survives in nineteen manuscripts, one of
which contains only a fragment.
The Ovide moralist is a translation and paraphrase of Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
augmented by extensive commentary on the Ovidian text. The commentary offers moral,
allegorical, and theological interpretations of Ovid’s tales. Each tale of the
Metamorphoses is translated and then expounded, the division between tale and
exposition usually signaled by an interjection like “Now I would like briefly to expound
the meaning of this fable.” The expositions are rarely brief, however: they are typically as
long as the paraphrases of the Ovidian narratives themselves. Plainly, the exegetical
function takes precedence. The Ovide moralisé in effect presents a vernacular synthesis
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