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
Download Presentation The PPT/PDF document "Politics and Poetics 5" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
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.