Simile and Identity in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Simile and Identity in Ovid's Metamorphoses PDF

Author: Marie Louise von Glinski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-02-09

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1139504207

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Nulli sua forma manebat. The world of Ovid's Metamorphoses is marked by constant flux in which nothing keeps its original form. This book argues that Ovid uses the epic simile to capture states of unresolved identity - in the transition between human, animal and divine identity, as well as in the poem's textual ambivalence between genres and the negotiation of fiction and reality. In conjuring up a likeness, the mental image of the simile enters a dialectic of appearances in a visually complex and treacherous universe. Original and subtle close readings of episodes in the poem, from Narcissus to Adonis, from Diana's blush to the freeform dreams in the House of Sleep, trace the simile's potential for exploiting indeterminacy and immateriality. In its protean permutations the simile touches on the most profound issues of the poem - the nature of humanity and divinity and the essence of poetic creation.

Simile and Identity in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Simile and Identity in Ovid's Metamorphoses PDF

Author: Marie Louise von Glinski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-02-09

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 0521760968

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The first monograph on Ovid's epic simile, offering fresh perspectives on central episodes of this important work.

Texts and Violence in the Roman World

Texts and Violence in the Roman World PDF

Author: Monica R. Gale

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-04-05

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1108624170

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From the bites and scratches of lovers and the threat of flogging that hangs over the comic slave, to murder, rape, dismemberment, and crucifixion, violence is everywhere in Latin literature. The contributors to this volume explore the manifold ways in which violence is constructed and represented in Latin poetry and prose from Plautus to Prudentius, examining the interrelations between violence, language, power, and gender, and the narrative, rhetorical, and ideological functions of such depictions across the generic spectrum. How does violence contribute to the pleasure of the text? Do depictions of violence always reinforce status-hierarchies, or can they provoke a reassessment of normative value-systems? Is the reader necessarily complicit with authorial constructions of violence? These are pressing questions both for ancient literature and for film and other modern media, and this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of cultural studies as well as of the ancient world.

Banished Voices

Banished Voices PDF

Author: Gareth D. Williams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-10-20

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780521451369

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This study examines the literary complexities of the poetry which Ovid wrote in Tomis, his place of exile on the coast of the Black Sea after he was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus in A.D. 8 because of the alleged salaciousness of the Ars Amatoria and a mysterious misdemeanour which is nowhere explained. Exile transforms Ovid into a melancholic poet of despair who claims that his creative faculties are in terminal decline. But recent research has exposed the ironic disjunction between many of the poet's claims and the latent artistry which belies them. Through a series of close readings which offer a new analytical contribution to the scholarly evaluation of the exile poetry, Dr Williams examines the nature and the extent of Ovidian irony in Tomis and demonstrates the complex literary designs which are consistently disguised under a veil of dissimulation. Gareth Williams aims to counteract traditional scholarly antipathy to the exile poetry, which could be said to represent the last frontier in modern Ovidian studies. Scholars working in the field will welcome his insights.

Silenced Voices

Silenced Voices PDF

Author: Bartolo Natoli

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0299312100

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Examines speech loss across all of Ovid's writings and the ways that motif is explored, developed, and modified in the poet's work after his exile from Rome.

Playing Gods

Playing Gods PDF

Author: Andrew Feldherr

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-08-16

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1400836549

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This book offers a novel interpretation of politics and identity in Ovid's epic poem of transformations, the Metamorphoses. Reexamining the emphatically fictional character of the poem, Playing Gods argues that Ovid uses the problem of fiction in the text to redefine the power of poetry in Augustan Rome. The book also provides the fullest account yet of how the poem relates to the range of cultural phenomena that defined and projected Augustan authority, including spectacle, theater, and the visual arts. Andrew Feldherr argues that a key to the political as well as literary power of the Metamorphoses is the way it manipulates its readers' awareness that its stories cannot possibly be true. By continually juxtaposing the imaginary and the real, Ovid shows how a poem made up of fictions can and cannot acquire the authority and presence of other discursive forms. One important way that the poem does this is through narratives that create a "double vision" by casting characters as both mythical figures and enduring presences in the physical landscapes of its readers. This narrative device creates the kind of tensions between identification and distance that Augustan Romans would have felt when experiencing imperial spectacle and other contemporary cultural forms. Full of original interpretations, Playing Gods constructs a model for political readings of fiction that will be useful not only to classicists but to literary theorists and cultural historians in other fields.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.511-733

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.511-733 PDF

Author: Ingo Zissos Andrew Gildenhard

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10-09

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781013286513

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This extract from Ovid's 'Theban History' recounts the confrontation of Pentheus, king of Thebes, with his divine cousin, Bacchus, the god of wine. Notwithstanding the warnings of the seer Tiresias and the cautionary tale of a character Acoetes (perhaps Bacchus in disguise), who tells of how the god once transformed a group of blasphemous sailors into dolphins, Pentheus refuses to acknowledge the divinity of Bacchus or allow his worship at Thebes. Enraged, yet curious to witness the orgiastic rites of the nascent cult, Pentheus conceals himself in a grove on Mt. Cithaeron near the locus of the ceremonies. But in the course of the rites he is spotted by the female participants who rush upon him in a delusional frenzy, his mother and sisters in the vanguard, and tear him limb from limb.The episode abounds in themes of abiding interest, not least the clash between the authoritarian personality of Pentheus, who embodies 'law and order', masculine prowess, and the martial ethos of his city, and Bacchus, a somewhat effeminate god of orgiastic excess, who revels in the delusional and the deceptive, the transgression of boundaries, and the blurring of gender distinctions.This course book offers a wide-ranging introduction, the original Latin text, study aids with vocabulary, and an extensive commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Gildenhard and Zissos's incisive commentary will be of particular interest to students of Latin at AS and undergraduate level. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis to encourage critical engagement with Ovid's poetry and discussion of the most recent scholarly thought. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Writing Metamorphosis in the English Renaissance

Writing Metamorphosis in the English Renaissance PDF

Author: Susan Wiseman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-24

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1107041651

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Susan Wiseman analyses mythical and natural creatures in English Renaissance writing, including Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest.

Ovid on Screen

Ovid on Screen PDF

Author: Martin M. Winkler

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-01-30

Total Pages: 491

ISBN-13: 1108485405

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The first study of Ovid, especially his Metamorphoses, as inherently visual literature, explaining his pervasive importance in our visual media.