Metamorphic Readings Transformation, Language, and Gender in the Interpretation of Ovid's Metamorphoses

by Sharrock, Alison; Möller, Daniel; Malm, Mats

• ISBN13: 9780198864066
• ISBN10: 019886406X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2020-09-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Mats Malm, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Gothenburg,Alison Sharrock, Professor of Classics, University of Manchester,Daniel Möller, Associate Professor in Comparative Literature, Lund University

Mats Malm is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg since 2004. He was Visiting Professor at J.W. Goethe-Universit?t, Frankfurt am Main (1998-1999), and currently at the University of Oslo (2015- ). Malm has published monographs on 17th, 18th, and 19th century Scandinavian historiography, the first Swedish novels (18th century), on Swedish baroque (17th century), and on the voice in poetry (Poesins röster, 2011). His monographs in English treat the Swedish Baroque from the perspective of history of literature, ideas and media, and the reception of Aristotle's Poetics, following the definition of the soul of poetry up to Romanticism. Malm has also published articles in Swedish and English on Old Norse topics including the reception of Old Norse, and on the reception of Classical tradition in 17th and 18th century Scandinavia. Malm is the director of the Swedish Literature Bank, a web site for digital editions of Swedish literature.

Alison Sharrock is Professor of Classics at the University of Manchester, where she has taught classical languages and literatures since 2000. She is currently Head of the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology, and Egyptology. A specialist in Republican and Augustan poetry, she has research interests in literary theory, including intertextuality, intratextuality, and paratextuality, genre, feminist theory, and theories of authorship. She also has a somewhat cautious interest in cognitive approaches to the study of literature.


Daniel Möller is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Lund. He was educated at the Universities of Link?ping, London (UCL) and Lund (PhD, 2011). He has published books and articles in Swedish and English on early modern Swedish and early modern European poetry and on Latin poetry.

Table of Contents

I Transformations into the Metamorphoses
1. Reading metamorphosis in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Alessandro Barchiesi
II Transformations in the Metamorphoses
2. Gender and transformation: Reading, Women, and Gender in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Alison Sharrock
3. Between a Rock and a Hard Race: Gender and Text in Ovid's Deucalion and Pyrrha Episode (Met. 1.313-415), Andrew Feldherr
4. HAC Arethusa TENUS (Met. 5.642). Geography and Poetics in Ovid's Arethusa, Eleni Ntanou
5. Ovid's Dream, or, Byblis and the Circle of Metamorphoses, Aaron Joseph Kachuck
6. Naso Deus: Ovid's Hidden Signature in the Metamorphoses, Mathias Hanses
III Transformations of the Metamorphoses
7. Latent Transformations: Reshaping the Metamorphoses, Monika Asztalos
8. The Bavarian Commentaries and the Beginning of the Medieval Reception of the Metamorphoses, Robin Wahlsten Böckerman
9. The Metamorphoses of Sin: Prudentius, Dante, Milton, Philip Hardie
10. Narcissus Revisited: Scholarly Approaches to the Narcissus Theme, Louise Vinge and Niclas Johansson