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Politics and Poetics 5 Politics and Poetics 5

Politics and Poetics 5 - PowerPoint Presentation

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Politics and Poetics 5 - PPT Presentation

Transforming epic Ovids Metamorphoses The politics of Ovids Met think about The pressure it puts on teleological authority Structure Ovid writes epic as an intricate tapestry of interwoven tales the connections between which are often oblique transitions between tales o ID: 536989

epic met ovid aeneid met epic aeneid ovid ovid

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Slide1

Politics and Poetics 5

Transforming epic: Ovid’s

MetamorphosesSlide2

The politics of Ovid’s

Met

: think about…

The pressure it puts on

teleological authority

Structure:

Ovid writes epic as an intricate tapestry of interwoven tales, the connections between which are often oblique; transitions between tales often span books – the shape of the epic book has loosened.

Where has the

epic hero

gone?

Where has

militaristic epic

gone?

How are Ovid’s

gods

and divinities characterised?

How much of the

Met

is

‘elegiac

’, or

‘Alexandrian

’? How weird is this? Slide3

Recall Ovid’s career trajectory

Amores

Ars

Amatoria

Remedia

Amoris

Medicamina

Heroides

Plus (alongside/after the

Met

):

Fasti

,

Tristia

,

Epistulae

Ex PontoSlide4

Counter-cultural elegy?

Amores

1.15.1-8:

 

‘Why

, biting Envy, do you charge me with slothful years, and call my song the work of an idle wit, complaining that, while

vigorous age gives strength, I neither, after the fashion of our fathers, pursue the dusty prizes of a soldier’s life, not learn garrulous legal lore, nor prostitute my voice in the ungrateful forum

?...But my quest is glory, through all posterity, and to be known forever in song throughout the

earth.’ Slide5

Subversive or/+ imperialist?

Ovid engages profoundly with the regime’s own programme, insistently probing the underpinnings of its authority’

(

Gareth Williams). Slide6

Metamorphoses

: the proem

In nova fert animus

mutatas

dicere

formas

corpora

; di,

coeptis

(

nam

vos

mutastis

et

illas

)

adspirate

meis

primaque

ab

origine

mundi

ad mea

perpetuum

deducite

tempora

carmen

!

 

My mind is bent to tell of

bodies

changed into new forms. O gods, for you yourselves have wrought the changes, breathe on these my undertakings, and

bring down

my

unbroken

song

from

the world’s very beginning to the present

times.Slide7

Ovid, poet of time

t

empora

= times, temples of head

Compare

Tristia

2.557-

60

If only you

would

recall your mood from anger for a moment, and order a few lines of this be read to you when you are at leisure, the few lines in which after beginning with the earliest origin of the world I have brought down the work to your times, Caesar (

in

tua

deduxi

tempora

, Caesar, opus

).’Slide8

Earlier transforming bodies:

the

Amores

Arma

gravi

numero

violentaque

bella

parabam

    

edere

,

materia

conveniente

modis

.

par

erat

inferior versus—

risisse

Cupido

   

dicitur

atque

unum

surripuisse

pedem

.

Amores

1.1.1-4

 

Arms and the violent deeds of war I was preparing

t

o

sound forth – in weighty rhythm, with matter suiting

measure.The

second verse was equal to the first, but Cupid

laughed

,They

say, and stole away one foot.Slide9

Metamorphosis

: endless change, or terminal states?

 

How do the theme and narratives of metamorphosis fit (or not) with the Augustan idea(l)s of

aeterna

Roma,

or

imperium sine fine

?

Can there be permanence in changeability?

What about expansionism, or the need to endlessly reiterate foundation?Slide10

Met

.15.431-40

And now fame has it that

Dardanian

Rome is rising, and laying deep and strong foundations by the stream of Tiber sprung from the Apennines. She therefore is changing her form by growth, and some say shall be the capital of the boundless world! So, they tell us, seers and fate-revealing oracles are declaring. And, as I myself remember, when Troy was tottering to her fall,

Helenus

the son of

Priam

said to Aeneas, who was weeping and doubtful of his fate, “O son of Venus, if you keep well in mind my soul’s prophetic visions, while you live Troy shall not wholly perish!...”Slide11

Virgil’s metamorphoses

Aeneid

3.19ff

: Aeneas encounters the young Trojan

Polidorus

in the form of a bleeding bush.

Aeneid

7. 10-24

: the Trojans skirt around

Caieta

, Circe’s realm, and hear distant growls of lions, boars, bears and wolves – humans in beast shape.

Aeneid

9.107-122

: the goddess Cybele asks her son Jupiter to save the burning Trojan ships. Jupiter transforms them into dolphin-like ‘goddesses of the sea’. Slide12

Transformative similes?

E.g

.

Aeneid

12.746-55

Aeneas, slowed though his knees were by the arrow wound

That hampered him at times, cutting his speed,

pressed on hotly, matching stride for stride,

Behind his shaken foe. As when a stag-hound

Corners a stag, blocked by a stream, or by

Alarm at a barrier of crimson feathers

Strung by beaters, then the dog assails him

With darting, barking runs; the stag in fear of nets

and the high river bank attempts

To flee and flee again a thousand ways,

But, packed with power, the

Umbrian hound

hangs on,

Muzzle agape; now, now he has him, now

As though he had him, snaps eluded jaws

And bites on empty air. Slide13

Ovid

Met.

3: introductionExceptionally, a book about a city, unified by this location

Thebes not Rome

Not successful foundation, but failed, tragic foundation

Civilization undone by civil war

Epic becoming tragedy/infected by elegy?

Met

.3 a key book in terms of exploring Ovid’s response to the

AeneidSlide14

Political readings of

Met

.3

….as an index of the

Metamorphoses’

s

provocative ‘reversal’ of the

Aeneid

’s

civilization-building teleology.

…as a book that, in indirect and subtle ways, does important ideological work by elaborating a negative mirror-image of Rome and its evolution.

….as a complex meditation on civil war and its role in Roman history

…as a suggestive portrayal and examination of the theme of artistic failure, and of the punishment of artists by tyrannical powers (cf. especially

Tristia

2.105-8, where Ovid compares himself to ‘innocent’

Actaeon

).

…as paradigmatic of an ideologically loaded reflection on modes of representation (visual, written, oral) in

Ovidian

poetry.