DESIRING ROME

Ovid's unfinished Fasti serves as an elegiac exploration of Rome's festivals and rites, reflecting the poet's fragmented identity during his exile. Richard J. King employs gender studies and Lacanian film theory to argue that this incompletion offers a skewed perspective that critiques the male-dominated Roman social hierarchy. By emulating the civic act of calendar presentation, Ovid's work reveals the tensions of identity within an imperial context that both celebrates and marginalizes its greatest poet. King's analysis highlights the interplay between social status and artistic expression in Roman culture.