A prominent function of the rival in the elegiac scenario is to make it possible for the poet–lover to express the negative emotions of jealousy and indignation, creating the narrative conditions for the elegist to contemplate images of violence, ugliness, and obtuseness through the aesthetic prism of the elegiac form. He thereby gives rise to a sense of artistic beauty that incorporates images of ugliness. The rival is an agent of the paradox of ugliness, physical as well as moral, operating at the core of elegy, and hence an agent of the grotesque. In describing the rival, Propertius resorts to the language of animal behaviour, Tibullus to that of derisible obtuseness, and Ovid to the rhetoric of blood and gore to raise questions about the possibility of a stable erotic relationship founded on the intensity of the protagonist’s passion and on the merits of his poetry. In the course of this process, the elegists reveal that elegiac love, conceived as it is in corporeal terms and in the context of a triangle formed by two lovers and one beloved, is necessarily susceptible to the intrusion of ugly, befouling, and degrading images.

This chapter is concerned with the idea that the elegiac grotesque is rooted in the character of the puella herself and may manifest itself as a consequence of her role in the genre. The repeated use of cosmetics in order to enhance her erotic appeal may cause her to lose her hair and hence her beauty, forcing her to studiously cover up her ugliness. Sex may also result in an unwanted pregnancy, forcing her to have an abortion in order to remain in the elegiac world. Pregnancy and loss of beauty are both anti-elegiac motifs, though they are always potentially present in the very conception of the puella. Elegiac love can cause the puella to cross the boundaries of elegy and to have recourse to anti-elegiac measures in order to re-enter her role in the genre. This is particularly evident in the abortion poems. There the grotesque enters deeply into the elegiac genre, since it is used to restore the condition that can make elegiac love possible again; though it does not become the main point of the elegy, it represents a destabilizing nucleus in its narrative core.