Sexual impotence and genre experimentation in Ovid’s Amores 3.7

Abstract

Ovid’s Elegy 3.7 from Amores the enunciator complains given that, suffering from sexual impotence, he was unable to unite with the young woman . Beyond these vicissitudes, we understand this episode as a metapoetic which presents the transient abandonment of the elegiac practice and foreshadows the approach to other poetic genres. In the elegiac code, where an objective is pursued but not attained (as, if it were, it would put an end to the amatory and writing practice), the desire for the puella’s body is comparable to the desire for the amatory and poetic practice. We consider this elegy not only shows an implied announcement of the abandonment of this type of poetry, but also a strengthening of the enunciator’s poetic streak and, thus, it foreshadows the development of other genres, which will include a subjacent amorous layer, as is substantiated by the rest of Ovid’s preserved works.