Poétique de la prière dans les œuvres d'Ovide

From his early works to the poems of exile, Ovid constructed a personal poetic language, mixing religious stylemes belonging to the liturgical language of the Augustan age with purely poetic stylemes, some taken from literary tradition, others quite original: he thus plays on the border-line separating the religious carmen from the poetic carmen, giving birth to a new song endowing poetry with a sacred status, making it the properly poietic music of creation whose breath gives the world its meaning, its form and its beauty.

When Ovid speaks to us of love, he also speaks to us of poetry, but not just a narcissistic poetry taken as its object and own end. What is reflected in the mirror of Ovidian verse as it takes shape in the utterance of prayer is a perspective – a transcendental perspective through which the poet attempts to contemplate the sacred Music which organizes the universe.