Classical World

In Amores 3.1 Ovid establishes functional connections between the figure of Elegy and both the poetic puella and poet-speaker. This paper demonstrates how the elegiac puella shares qualities with both Elegy and the poet-speaker, especially the ability to persuade; and how this ability contributes to the puella's function as a poeta herself, a role that the poet-speaker develops in other poems in Amores 1-3. Ovid enhances the status of the puella by making her, along with the poet-speaker, a practitioner of the arts of E/elegy, and he celebrates the female further by using Elegy to showcase his accomplishment.