Tra imitatio ed aemulatio : Dante, Ovidio e il canone degli auctores

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of Dante’s literary canons in which there is the name of Ovid. These canons are four and represent an essential point in Dante’s works because they cover a wide range of meanings: on the one hand, Ovid is a stylistic model, for example in the work De vulgari eloquentia; on the other hand, the Metamorphoses are important for some myths, as shown by the Convivio. Both Ovid and Dante often use the literary canons in order to define their relationship with other poets. Therefore, these four canons play a fundamental role to represent Dante’s recov- ery and revision of some Ovidian passages, in particular from the Metamorphoses and the love elegies. Moreover, this analysis is useful to understand Ovid’s importance in the Middle Ages in comparison with other Latin poets, such as Virgil, Lucan and Stace.