Polyvalent Germanicus in "Fasti"

Abstract

The generic status of Fasti is a crucial issue in Ovidian scholarship, because of the interlocking of different literary codes within the text, such as elegy, didactic poetry and epic. Since the poem arises from its own indefinition, it can be seen as a sort of literary hybrid. Germanicus, both the poem’s addressee and a relevant figure of two exile elegies (Ex Ponto 2.1 y 4.8), is built as a character in the strict sense that makes clear the poem’s hybridization or mixture. The configuration of the character of Germanicus as a man of letters, arms and power exhibits the combination of diverse generic elements and links them with different aspects of the text. I aim to show that the polyvalent construction of Germanicus in Fasti relates, from a metapoetic viewpoint, to the generic nature of Ovid’s poem on Roman time.