Lessons from Ovid’s "Ibis" in the Middle Ages.

Description: Focuses on Ovid’s post-exilic poem "Ibis," now nearly forgotten in scholarship but once central to medieval readers. Catalogues the extant manuscripts of Ibis and compares this to the higher number of mentions in manuscript inventories, before considering the marginal glosses in manuscripts that contain the poem. These glosses suggest that the poem probably functioned as a teaching text, owing to its riddle-like lines and the numerous allusions on which the glosses focus. Includes brief comments on Chaucer's view of Ovid as a clerk.