ISBN : 9780198864066
Ovid's remarkable and endlessly fascinating Metamorphoses is one of the best-known and most popular works of classical literature, exerting a pervasive influence on later European literature and culture. A vast repository of mythic material as well as a sophisticated manipulation of story-telling, the poem can be appreciated on many different levels and by audiences of very different backgrounds and educational experiences. As the poem's focus on transformation and transgression connects in many ways with contemporary culture and society, modern research perspectives have developed correspondingly. Metamorphic Readings presents the state of the art in research on this canonical Roman epic. Written in an accessible style, the essays included represent a variety of approaches, exploring the effects of transformation and the transgression of borders. The contributors investigate three main themes: transformations into the Metamorphoses (how the mythic narratives evolved), transformations in the Metamorphoses (what new understandings of the dynamics of metamorphosis might be achieved), and transformations of the Metamorphoses (how the Metamorphoses were later understood and came to acquire new meanings). The many forms of transformation exhibited by Ovid's masterpiece are explored-including the transformation of the genre of mythic narrative itself.
I Transformations into the Metamorphoses
1 Alessandro Barchiesi: Reading metamorphosis in Ovid's Metamorphoses
II Transformations in the Metamorphoses
2 Alison Sharrock: Gender and transformation: Reading, Women, and Gender in Ovid's Metamorphoses
3 Andrew Feldherr: Between a Rock and a Hard Race: Gender and Text in Ovid's Deucalion and Pyrrha Episode (Met. 1.313-415)
4 Eleni Ntanou: HAC Arethusa TENUS (Met. 5.642). Geography and Poetics in Ovid's Arethusa
5 Aaron Joseph Kachuck: Ovid's Dream, or, Byblis and the Circle of Metamorphoses
6 Mathias Hanses: Naso Deus: Ovid's Hidden Signature in the Metamorphoses
III Transformations of the Metamorphoses
7 Monika Asztalos: Latent Transformations: Reshaping the Metamorphoses
8 Robin Wahlsten Böckerman: The Bavarian Commentaries and the Beginning of the Medieval Reception of the Metamorphoses
9 Philip Hardie: The Metamorphoses of Sin: Prudentius, Dante, Milton
10 Louise Vinge and Niclas Johansson: Narcissus Revisited: Scholarly Approaches to the Narcissus Theme