MORFOLOGÍA Y SIGNIFICADO DE LA CAMA EN MARCEL PRÉVOST. DEL LECHO CONYUGAL AL CAMASTRO DEL ADULTERIO

El erotismo ha sido siempre una constante en la producción literaria de Marcel Prévost. Una sutil exaltación física del deseo que el escritor parisino proyectaba en la narrativa de aquellas escenas y situaciones que recreaba en sus textos. En muchas de ellas, la cama será el centro neurálgico de esa amatoria, generada o contenida, alrededor de la cual las mujeres burguesas tamizaban su existencia en el círculo social al que pertenecían. A lo largo del presente estudio profundizaremos en los significados de la cama, yendo desde la sacralidad del lecho conyugal a los camastros improvisados en lugares ocultos para consumar la infidelidad, concibiéndose este mueble de sueño y ensueño como dual representación física de libertad y sujeción entre los individuos. Abstract: Despite not being recognised by the literary critics as an erotic writer, Marcel Prévost frequently invokes the heightening of passionate love and the scenes which depict it. In many of them, the bed was the nexus of that ars amatoria, created or contained, around which Bourgeois ladies sifted their existence within the social circle they inhabited. This paper examines in depth the meanings of the bed, from a sacrosanct marital space to a clandestine mise-en-scene to consummate adulterous liaisons, approaching this piece of furniture, created for sleep and dreams, as a dual physical representation of freedom and subjection between individuals.

THE EMOTIONS OF MEDEA THE LETTER-WRITER (OVID, HEROIDES 12)

Medea fascinated Ovid more than any other female mythical figure. She features in the Ars Amatoria (1.336; 2.381–2), the Heroides (6.75, 127–8, 151; 12 passim; 17.229, 233), the Metamorphoses (7.1–424), and the Tristia (3.9). Ovid also composed a tragedy called Medea (Am. 2.18.13–16; Tr. 2.553–4), which unfortunately has not survived.1 In the Remedia amoris Medea is mentioned in a list of mythical men and women who would have been cured of their torturing love passion, if Ovid had been their praeceptor. Medea is not named, but the identification is obvious (Rem. am. 59–60): nec dolor armasset contra sua viscera matrem, / quae socii damno sanguinis ulta virum est (‘Nor would a mother's vengeance on her husband / have steeled her heart to slay their progeny’).

Love and Incest

This chapter starts by discussing Orpheus as a figure who combines the roles of the archetypal poet and lawgiver (Horace, Ars Poetica 391–401; Ovid, Metamorphoses 10–11). While in Horace the legendary bard institutes marriage laws, in Ovid he is the founding father of pederasty. Orpheus’ version of the myth of Myrrha (a daughter who fell in love with her father) re-evaluates the prohibition on incest as the origin of the law of the father. Myrrha’s love is an attempt to appropriate patria potestas by challenging the father’s power to say no to incest. What is more, the myths of Orpheus and Myrrha resonate with Augustan Rome: Orpheus bears more than fleeting similarities to the teacher of the Ars amatoria; Cinyras and Myrrha recall Augustus and Julia, a resemblance that opens the gap between the intention of the law of the pater patriae and its undesirable effects.

Sexperts and Legal Experts

This chapter situates the expertise of the praeceptor amoris (‘teacher of love’) in the context of the rise of the Roman jurists in the early Principate. The autonomy of jurisprudence in the schools of law goes hand in hand with the independence of sexuality in Ovid’s school of love. The bulk of the chapter explores the juridico-discursive nature of Ovid’s Ars amatoria and includes a discussion of Ovid’s account of Tiresias (Metamorphoses 3) that highlights the confluence of amatory and juridical expertise. It explores the deep interconnections between the didactic discourses of jurists and love poets. Since both Ovid’s innovative laws of love and Augustus’ legal reforms make female sexuality the centre of attention, the chapter focuses on the ways in which both Ovid and Augustus aim to fashion women in the image of their desires.

Poets and Lawmakers

This chapter argues that Ovid’s didactic elegy (Ars amatoria) should be studied in the tradition of the genre’s founding father, Hesiod. The relationship between law and didacticism is encoded already in Hesiod’s Works and Days and continues thereafter in Greek elegy (Theognis and Solon). Ovid is part of this tradition. The courtroom setting, to which Ovid has repeated recourse, reproduces the trial setting of the Works and Days. Not unlike Hesiod, Ovid aims at an out-of-court settlement in contrast with the litigiousness of corrupt lords. Hesiod and Solon cast themselves as champions of justice in a world dominated by unjust rulers. Subtly but clearly, this is how Ovid envisages the relationship between his poetry and the laws of Augustus. The Roman poet aligns himself with the old and authoritative voices of legendary bards and lawgivers in competition with powerful leaders who attempt to control the juridical order.