Elegia epistolare, epistola elegiaca: evoluzioni formali e strategie comunicative nelle opere dell'esilio di Ovidio

At the outset of Ovid’s second collection of elegies written in exile, the Epistulae ex Ponto, it is possible to detect an ambivalence between the work’s alleged novelty and its equally claimed similarity with the previous Tristia. It is worth examining the actual value of this ambivalence: in fact, if the res («contents») of the two collections are said to be the same, the systematic employment of the epistolary format in the ex Ponto (along with the statement of the addressees’ names) turns out as an important strand of evolution from the Tristia, a collection in which only few poems can be wholly described as ‘letters’. I try to show the difference between Ovid’s two exilic works (a difference most visible in the way in which the poet approaches his interlocutors) through the analysis of two texts, an elegy of the Tristia (IV 5) and an epistle of the ex Ponto (I 9), addressed to the same individual.