Self-Mythologization of Publius Ovidius Naso’s Biography

The present paper concentrates on analyzing the peculiarities of Ovid’s personal myth. It must be admitted that this problem is relatively fresh in literary criticism and needs a thorough studying. The main purpose of our research is to suggest a new approach to the reception of poet’s biographical data. It is shown that Ovid’s literary works such as “The Loves”, “The Art of Love” and “Sorrows” are reflective formations, which included the self-mythologization components. Thus the poetic narrative has been considered as a verbal instrument of personal myth encoding. Accordingly, as a methodological background, the author uses the myth theory, biographical and psychoanalytical methods that are allowed to ascertain the phenomenon of Ovid’s self-identification. The benefit of this study lies in applying the conceptual statements of a myth criticism to the famous Roman’s life story. Special attention is given to the psychological and philosophical perspectives of this theory. As a result, the two mythological themes in Ovid’s autobiography are presented. In addition, it is retraced a function of the collective unconscious in the personal myth assembling. The final conclusion is that Ovid’s biographical myth transformed into an open structure which constantly enriches by the author’s interpretations.