I. Outline of the talk

A. Introduction: What made Ovid so dangerous?

B. Ovid’s Life and Works

1. Poems in Rome: Amores ("Loves"), Heroides ("Heroines"), Ars Amatoria ("Art of Love") and Remedia Amoris ("Remedies for Love"), Medea, Fasti ("Calendar")

2. Poems in Exile: Tristia ("Sorrows") and Epistulae ex Ponto ("Letters from the Black Sea")

C. The Metamorphoses

1. What kind of a poem is it?: Ovid’s Prologue

2. Structure of the poem

3. Major themes of the poem

4. What does the Metamorphoses mean?

D. Augustus and Ovid

1. Augustus in the Metamorphoses

2. Ovid in Exile

II. Passages

1. In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora: di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illa)
adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen. (Met. 1. 1-4)

Of bodies changed to other forms I tell:
You Gods, who have yourselves wrought every change,
Inspire my enterprise and lead my lay
In one continuous song from nature’s first

Remote beginnings to our modern times.

2. Outline of the Metamorphoses (from Toohey 1992: 148)

Prologue: 1. 1-4

Introduction: The Creation and Flood 1.5-1.451
Part I: Gods, 1.452-6.420
Part II: Heroes and Heroines, 6. 421-11.193
Part III: Historical Personages, 11.194-15.870
Epilogue, 15. 871-9

3. Our starting point must always be the realization that the Metamorphoses are an immensely varied creation that defies schematizing analysis. (Galinsky 1975: vii)

4. The Metamorphoses is a kaleidoscope of literary forms and moods&endash;drama both comic and tragic, mime, hymn, catalog poetry, epic, epigram, epyllion, and elegy, to name only the most important. (Galinsky 1996: 262)

5. As the tale spread views varied; some believed
Diana’s violence unjust; some praised it,
As proper to her chaste virginity.
Both sides found reason for their point of view. (Met. 3. 253-255, Melville p. 58)

6. Phaethon would shun the sky, if he were alive, and the horse
Which he stupidly hoped for he would refuse to touch.
I too admit, for I have felt them, that I fear the weapons of Jupiter;
I think, when it thunders, that the savage fire is meant for me. (Tristia 1.1. 79-82)

7. Why did I see anything? Why did I make my eyes guilty?
Why did I unintentionally get to know a fault?
In ignorance Actaeon saw Diana without clothes;
Nonetheless he became the prey of his own dogs.
Doubtless when dealing with the gods even fortune must be atoned for,
Nor is chance an excuse when a divinity has been wronged. (Tristia 1.2. 103-108)

8. Now stands my task accomplished, such a work
As not the wrath of Jove, nor fire nor sword
Nor the devouring ages can destroy.
Let, when it will, that day, that has no claim
But to my mortal body, end the span
Of my uncertain years. Yet I’ll be borne,
The finer part of me, above the stars,
Immortal, and my name shall never die.
Wherever through the lands beneath her sway
The might of Rome extends, my words shall be
Upon the lips of men. If truth at all
Is stablished by poetic prophecy,
My fame shall live to all eternity. (Met. 15. 871-879, Melville p. 379)

9. The Metamorphoses lacks a center. The function of the Ovidian exegete is, while stressing the apparent disunity, to emphasize some of the modes by which Ovid’s Alexandrian voice or style (which offers the poem its true unity) becomes manifest. This may offend the reader expecting philosophical profundity. Such a reader may find some consolation in the epic’s wry, sometimes humane, and often brutal insights into human nature. I suspect, however, that such a reader will miss the real source of consolation. That is the poem’s polycentricity: lack of narrative and logical closure renders the Metamorphoses a most joyfully subversive piece of work. (Toohey 1992: 149-150)

10. Perhaps the key to Ovid’s spirit, if there is one, is his airy mocking freedom. Ovid refuses to be fettered by anything, by the restrictions of hexameter and elegiac verse, which he makes move with a speed and grace with which it had never moved before, by the distinctions of genre, which he broke down to allow Latin verse to do things it had never done before, or by the sobriety of the Augustan regime, whose sacred cows were no match for his irreverence. (Mack 1988: 157).

III. Bibliography

Barchiesi, Alessandro. The Poet and the Prince: Ovid and Augustan Discourse. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1997.

Dickson, Jay. "Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Erring by Design." Hum 110 lecture, Reed College, February 17, 1999.

Galinsky, Karl. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975

&endash;&endash;, Augustan Literature. Princeton, 1996.

Mack, Sara. Ovid. New Haven and London, 1988.

Toohey, Peter. Reading Epic: An Introduction to the Ancient Narratives. London and New York, 1992.