Ovid Metamorphoses

Universität Turin, 13.05.2021, ESCL-Tagung "Narrations des origines"

Der Vortrag möchte den funktionalen Zusammenhang von Nacktheit und Imagination untersuchen und aufzeigen, wie innerhalb einer Kultur der Bekleidung das Begehren, unter den Textilien den nackten Körper zu erblicken, als Urszene des Ästhetischen entworfen wird.
In einem ersten Teil werden ausgehend von verschiedenen Kulturtheorien (u.a. Freud und Descola) theoretische Zugänge zur Nacktheit entwickelt, die die Nacktheit als Figuration von ‚Natur‘ in den Blick nehmen und rekonstruieren, inwiefern dabei diese nackte Natur einer bekleideten Kultur gegenübergestellt wird.
Der zweite Teil verfolgt diese theoretischen Zusammenhänge an ausgewählten Beispielen aus der Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte des nackten Körpers: zunächst bei Ovid im antiken Mythos, wo bereits die Gegensätzlichkeit von Nacktheit und Imagination angelegt ist, und dann mit Blick auf das 18. Jahrhundert und Johann Joachim Winckelmann im Besonderen. Dabei zeigen sich in Winckelmanns Texten (Gedanken über die Nachahmung; Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums) zwei verschiedene Konzeptionen der Nacktheit, die in der Gegenüberstellung von Natur und Kunst die Dichotomie von Natur und Kultur hervortreiben.

This talk wants to examine the relationship between nudity and imagination and show how within a culture of clothing the desire to glimpse the naked body under textiles is designed as a primal scene of the aesthetic.
In the first part, theoretical approaches to nakedness are developed based on various cultural theories (including Freud and Descola) that focus on nakedness as a figuration of 'nature' and reconstruct the extent to which this naked nature is thereby juxtaposed with a clothed culture.
The second part traces these theoretical correlations through selected examples from the literary and cultural history of the naked body: first with Ovid in the ancient myth, where the opposition of nakedness and imagination is already laid out, and then with a view to the 18th century and Johann Joachim Winckelmann in particular. In Winckelmann's texts (Gedanken über die Nachahmung; Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums) two different conceptions of nudity are revealed, which in the opposition of nature and art emphasize the dichotomy of nature and culture.

In the last decades, pioneering studies argued that the debt owed by Vergil to the Homeric epic is not disjunct from a knowledge of the Hellenistic exegetical tradition on the part of the Latin poet. In more recent times, the same kind of sophisticated relationship was explored for Horace and the Greek archaic lyrics as well as for Ovid and Homer. In this paper, after a survey on the spread of the Greek literary culture and scholarship in Rome under Augustus, three study-cases are proposed of possible Ovid's reception of mythical traditions in the Metamorphoses under the influence of the Alexandrian exegesis on Pindar.

Alpha & Omega: Tales of Transformation.
The twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet introduce twenty-four stories of transformation and metamorphosis from Greek and Roman history and mythology. Each story is illustrated with one or more object from across the collections of the University of Sydney held in the Nicholson Museum, the Macleay Museum and the University Art Gallery.
In 2018, these same three collections will themselves be transformed into the new Chau Chak Wing Museum.
This final Nicholson Museum exhibition represents the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega of what has been and what will be.

Why does Apuleius reference Pythagoras at the opening of the Metamorphoses’ final book? Drawing on Pythagoreanism’s importance to Plutarch and Apuleius, I suggest that Pythagoras signals Book 11’s overarching theme and tone.Thematically,Apuleius uses Pythagorean metempsychosis to connect Lucius’ quest for recognition as a human in asinine “form” (figura) with his later inability to access Isiac wisdom hidden by hieroglyphic animal “characters” (figurae). Tonally, Apuleius builds on the ambiguity of parody and sincerity in Pythagoras’ speech in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Couched in a set of Egyptian and Pythagorean topoi, Lucius’ reinterpretation of his metamorphic adventures hovers between profundity and absurdity.

The close affinities between Lord of the flies and the Bacchae have been the subject of scholarly discussion. This paper revisits the relationship between the two works and contends that Golding’s intertextual engagement with the Bacchae can be construed through the lens of the concept of sparagmos (dismemberment). The novel includes many kinds of sparagmos: physical, material, psychological, social, character, and textual. The English novelist ‘dismembers’ the Bacchae and then performs a compositio membrorum by reassembling a new textual ‘body’ from the dispersed ‘limbs’ of the Euripidean play. This study also suggests a new classical source for the Lord of the Flies which has so far entirely escaped scholarly attention. The novelist conflates his tragic model with Ovid’s epic version of the Pentheus myth in the Metamorphoses (3.511–733), which is itself modelled after the Euripidean play, thereby functioning as a mediating intertext between the two works.

Depuis quelques années on enregistre un regain d’intérêt de la critique pour l’Ovide moralisé, poème anonyme du début du XIVe siècle, qui représente la première traduction intégrale en vers français des Métamorphoses d’Ovide, dans laquelle chaque « fable » ovidienne est assortie de commentaires évhéméristes, allégoriques ou moraux1. La fortune récente de ce poème longtemps négligé malgré quelques rares études, comme la monographie de Paule Demats2, se situe dans le sillon des articles écrit par Marc-René Jung à la fi n des années 19903. Ces études montraient de façon éloquente la nécessité d’une nouvelle édition de l’Ovide moralisé, qui remplacerait celle qui avait été préparée au début du vingtième siècle par Cornelis De Boer. Les dimensions du poème et la complexité de la tradition manuscrite ont pourtant découragé pendant longtemps les chercheurs.

In 1436, Leon Battista Alberti wrote a letter to Filippo Brunelleschi, which he attached to a manuscript of his recently completed treatise on painting, De pictura. In it, Alberti lauded some of the Florentine artists of his day, singling out Brunelleschi for particular praise on account of the unprecedented engineering feat of constructing the cupola of the Florentine cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. This article undertakes a close reading of some parts of the letter, focusing especially on the link that Alberti draws between great intellects (ingegni) and giants. Exploring the cultural traditions that might have informed Alberti's thinking—in particular, canto XXXI of Dante's Inferno— -the article considers how the giants introduce an element of moral jeopardy, significantly complicating what might otherwise appear to be a purely celebratory text. This sense of ambivalence is further explored in relation to the 'long exile' from which Alberti says that his family (banished from Florence for nearly three decades, until 1428) had recently returned. Similar phrases appear in Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and consideration of these poems, it is argued, might further inflect our understanding of Alberti's words in the letter. In this way, the article investigates how Alberti employed sophisticated literary means in order to express his own feelings regarding Brunelleschian ingegno and technical mastery; feelings that were both highly nuanced and, ultimately, unsettled.

For the last 2,500 years literature has been attacked, booed, and condemned, often for the wrong reasons and occasionally for very good ones. ‘The Hatred of Literature’ examines the evolving idea of literature as seen through the eyes of its adversaries: philosophers, theologians, scientists, pedagogues, and even leaders of modern liberal democracies. From Plato to C. P. Snow to Nicolas Sarkozy, literature’s haters have questioned the value of literature―its truthfulness, virtue, and usefulness―and have attempted to demonstrate its harmfulness.

Literature does not start with Homer or Gilgamesh, William Marx says, but with Plato driving the poets out of the city, like God casting Adam and Eve out of Paradise. That is its genesis. From Plato the poets learned for the first time that they served not truth but merely the Muses. It is no mere coincidence that the love of wisdom (philosophia) coincided with the hatred of poetry. Literature was born of scandal, and scandal has defined it ever since.

In the long rhetorical war against literature, Marx identifies four indictments―in the name of authority, truth, morality, and society. This typology allows him to move in an associative way through the centuries. In describing the misplaced ambitions, corruptible powers, and abysmal failures of literature, anti-literary discourses make explicit what a given society came to expect from literature. In this way, anti-literature paradoxically asserts the validity of what it wishes to deny. The only threat to literature’s continued existence, Marx writes, is not hatred but indifference.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Words from Elsewhere
First Trial: Authority
Second Trial: Truth
Third Trial: Morality
Fourth Trial: Society
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

The first part of this paper argues that Orpheus' telling of Hyacinth's story in Ov. Met. 10, 162-219 is a reworking of his own personal grief for Eurydice, narrated by Ovid shortly before. The second part analyses the extant Hellenistic models for the Ovidian version of the myth.

En el siguiente trabajo se analizarán distintos fragmentos de la obra de Ovidio donde el autor reelabora el tópico non omnis moriar, probablemente relacionado con la Oda 30,3 de la obra Odas (Horacio). Se intentará observar qué tipo de relación se establece entre la aparición de estos fragmentos en sus escritos y el contexto en el que se produjeron. La relación con Augusto parece cobrar gran importancia a la hora de interpretar las reelaboraciones y usos del tópico como una forma de persistir más allá de lo político y social.

L'histoire d’Orphée est celle de l'impossibilité à faire revenir Eurydice. Il descend chercher
son épouse aux Enfers, échoue à la faire revenir et s'en retourne seul. Quel retour pour Orphée sans
Eurydice ? Si le retour sur terre est accordé au poète, ce n'est pas un retour à la normale. En se
retournant, Orphée se ferme plusieurs retours : celui de sa femme, mais aussi une nouvelle catabase
et un retour à l'identique sur terre. Ironie du sort, en se retournant, Orphée ne peut plus s'en
retourner de là – dans un sens spatial comme ontologique – d'où il vient. Le retour d’Orphée s'ancre
ainsi dans une double dimension, qui touche à l'être autant qu'à l'espace.
Eurydice appartient à l'espace terrestre. Le serpent, l'herbe, le talon, le soulignent. Orphée,
poète des hauteurs, a part à l'espace aérien, mais s'enfonce sous terre à la mort d'Eurydice. Ce
voyage est une transgression spatiale et temporelle : comme Eurydice, Orphée, est descendu trop
tôt. Malgré la transgression, Orphée domine l'espace souterrain et fait s'inverser le destin. Or s'il
récupère Eurydice par sa seule action, il la perd de même et fait en même temps l’épreuve de sa
force et de sa faiblesse.
Le retour sur terre sans Eurydice, ouvre un temps de lutte : Orphée veut redescendre ; les
Enfers lui sont fermés. Suit un temps de résignation et le poète retrouve son espace des hauteurs,
mais pas à l'identique. Nouveau démiurge, il s'ancre dans l'espace terrestre en le modelant. Avec le
retour sans Eurydice, le poète recrée un monde qu'il forme à l'image de l'absente. Il repousse toute
présence féminine, mais ne peut lutter contre les ménades : le poète retourné des Enfers a perdu
l'efficience de son chant. Orphée meurt d'être retourné sans s'être retrouvé et de s'ancrer dans
l'espace terrestre. Avec la dispersion de ses membres, il n'a plus d'espace propre à habiter ; il rentre
en exilé.
Second mouvement dans la dialectique du retour, le poète mort retrouve les Enfers. Orphée
retrouve Eurydice et un espace qui, s'il n'est plus l'espace initial des hauteurs, est celui dans lequel il
domine cependant : il possède enfin Eurydice dans un mouvement d'embrassement inverse de celui,
avorté, tenté sur le chemin vers la terre. Le véritable retour est bien celui là. Revenir est-il alors
synonyme de « retourner » ? Si Orphée est bien revenu des Enfers, il n'en sera entièrement retourné
qu'en y retournant.

After the audacious study and profound interest in Latin literature by the autodidact Charles Chesnutt is presented, this contribution argues that, unlike scholarship up to now pointing to orally-passed African American folktales, many of Chesnutt's Conjure Woman stories are in fact variations of selected stories from Ovid's masterpiece Metamorphoses. This claim is underscored by citing specific incidences of conjuring of North Carolina slaves into animals and trees in Chesnutt's stories with the magic (Voodoo) transformations of characters in selections of Metamorphoses by Ovid.  This use of Ovid by Chesnutt is argued to be an example of "signifying" as described in the theory of African American rhetoric by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his study, The Signifying Monkey.

Ovids Metamorphosen weisen ein ‚Heldenbild‘ auf, das sich radikal von ‚klassischen‘ antiken Epen wie Homers Odyssee oder Vergils Aeneis unterscheidet. An die Stelle des einen Helden tritt nun eine Polyphonie von Helden in ca. 250 Einzelerzählungen, die unter dem Aspekt aitiologisch motivierter Verwandlungen zu einem narrativ hochkomplexen Gesamtgebilde verbunden sind. Der Beitrag versucht, diesen in der Forschung immer wieder betonten Aspekt näher zu analysieren, indem er Ansätze der Tübinger Ambiguitätsforschung (GRK 1808) und des Freiburger Heldenprojektes (SFB 948) integriert. Im Einzelnen wird auf der Schnittfläche von Literaturwissenschat und Linguistik gefragt, wie Ambiguität in den Metamorphosen sprachlich erzeugt wird. Es geht also weniger um die Bewertung einzelner Figuren unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Heldenhaftigkeit (z.B. ‚Ist Actaeon ein Held oder Anti-Held‘), sondern darum, wie – eine Ebene tiefer – eine Sprache der Ambiguität erzeugt wird. Ausgangspunkt bilden sprachliche Einheiten, die Aspekte des Halben bezeichnen, wie die bei Ovid auffällig häufigen Komposita auf semi- / ‚halb‘ (z.B. semi-vir / ‚Halb-mann‘).

Der Artikel stellt eine Unterrichtsreihe zum Ariadne-Mythos bei Ovid für den Lateinunterricht in der gymnasialen Oberstufe vor. Beigefügt sind ein Tafelbild sowie Kopiervorlagen mit den für den Unterricht aufbereiteten Textstellen, Abbildungen, einer Karte und eine Übersicht über den notwendigen Aufbauwortschatz.

Returning to the work begun in Amy Richlin's seminal essay on the unsettling topic of sexual violence in Ovid's work, "Reading Ovid's Rapes," this paper takes another look at the rich interpretive problems posed by the incessantly recurring theme of sexual violence in the "Metamorphoses." Though the perpetrators are almost exclusively divine, roughly a third of the myths recounted by the Roman poet features some form of sexual assault. When read in the context of conservative Augustan-era marriage legislation like the "Lex Julia de adulteriis," Ovid's insistence on the theme can be read as an indictment of Augustus himself, who after all insisted on likening himself in official imperial iconography to the cult of such gods as Apollo and Jupiter, two of the most egregious assailants throughout the long poem. However, each reiteration of the theme also reveals a series of other important concomitant concerns that arise from cases of sexual violence, including questions pertaining to illegitimate children and other unanticipated repercussions in the victim's family, that actually reveal Ovid to be more seriously engaged in thinking about the subject than he is commonly given credit for. Taking Ovid to task for the grave issues he tackles can actually provide fodder for productive discussion of topical issues effecting life on campus and in our country today. It is absolutely imperative that certain topics be addressed in productive and adult ways with our students if we expect to raise the level of our public discourse. Far from aestheticizing these topics as mere literary artifacts, Ovid's complex text demands to be read on a number of levels that are all pertinent to the world in which we live today.

This paper discusses three very influential contributions to contemporary Ovidian criticism: Italo Calvino’s "Ovid and Universal Contiguity" (1979) and "Six Memos for the Next Millennium" (1988), Gianpiero Rosati’s "Narciso e Pigmalione" (1983) and Nicola Gardini’s "Con Ovidio" (2017). Within the essays of these three Italian critics and authors emerges an idea of the "Metamorphoses" as a grandiose depiction of the precarious and deceptive nature of reality: an idea which is not, of course, the only interpretive option from a critical point of view, but is doubtless the best suited to the "Zeitgeist" in the «Age of Uncertainty».

Ovid’s Metamorphoses opens in Book 1 with an erotic pastoral scene between Apollo and Daphne.  This twin narrative of pursuit and of resistance appears through both masculine and feminine perspectives simultaneously.  Daphne’s transformation into a laurel tree by her father preserves her virginity at the cost of her existence as a nymph.  This shocking metamorphosis also leaves a mark upon Apollo and upon Roman history through the adoption of the laurel wreath crown.  Ovid’s account of Apollo and Daphne demonstrates four ways unrequited love metaphorically transformed both lover and beloved.  Furthermore, the myth has inspired European artists for the past five centuries to portray the intimacy and immediacy of the narrative’s effects.

Cosa accomuna due oggetti culturali come il racconto della trasformazione dei pirati in delfini del III libro delle Metamorfosi di Ovidio e Origin, la serie di immagini in movimento dell'artista visuale contemporaneo Daniel Lee? E, soprattutto, cosa li rende così distanti?

"Maintaining a radical, unconventional, and ambitious thesis, to say the least, Workman makes his case so fully, and with such learning and conviction, that even his most resistant readers will find themselves forced to interrogate the comfort zone of their own critical habits of mind. Whether or not Workman succeeds entirely in elevating Chaucer's poetics into the neo-Platonic sublime remains an open question. But what is certain is this: Written with boldness and panache, this wonderfully readable study articulates an interpretative position that is unique among contemporary studies - not only of Chaucer, but of medieval literature generally."
- Peter W. Travis, Professor of English, Dartmouth College, USA

"This exhilarating study shows us Chaucer thinking the deepest of thoughts about the metaphysics of Art, but doing so with an entirely characteristic blend of high seriousness and low humour. Workman's approach offers a restless bricolage of analysis and analogy, illustration, and illumination, to reveal the essentially metapoetic and metaphysical basis of Chaucerian narrative. Workman's Chaucer is both Ancient and Modern, effortlessly classicising and radically posthumanist, spinning an elegant gossamer of Poetic theory from the fabric of his own narrative practice."
- Vincent Gillespie, J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language, University of Oxford, UK

BLOCH Jonathan, « Translatio Ovidii. De l’Ovide moralisé en vers à sa traduction (et impression ?) par William Caxton », dans Pérégrinations et métamorphoses. Actes de la journée d’études du 19 oct. 2017, Presses universitaires de l’ICES, La Roche sur Yon, 2019 (coll. Colloques), p. 41-66.

Comparison of ancient accounts of the myth of Actaeon shows that, while the nature of his offense differs markedly between sources, the form of his death is stable throughout antiquity. This chapter uses observations from Nick Lowe and Ada Neschke-Hentschke about the paradigmatic functioning of myths to consider how the inevitability of Actaeon’s end could be harnessed to lend specific narrative colouring to retellings. It uses Ovid’s account of Actaeon in the Metamorphoses to examine the broader ancient tradition, arguing that the identification of Actaeon by name functioned in a meta-poetic manner to hasten his death, and that the inevitability of this death brought with it implicit consideration of the workings of justice in the mythic story-world.

Ulisse è il campione della ragione che trionfa in Occidente, l’eroe dell’intelligenza e dell’avventura. Ma la sua figura non è univoca nella tradizione antica. Le maschere del mito greco parlano di altre ragioni, di passioni irriducibili, di colpe che l’eroe non ha pagato. E di una giustizia che non si lascia iscrivere nella legge condivisa.
Ulisse che calunnia; Ulisse, infido e vigliacco in battaglia; Ulisse che corrompe; Ulisse che tradisce; Ulisse che sacrifica una fanciulla affinché soffino venti favorevoli alla partenza da Troia; Ulisse che seduce e abbandona; Ulisse, il reduce, che fa strage di giovani a Itaca. Capitolo per capitolo, la luce tocca personaggi femminili e maschili – compagni di impresa in guerra e in viaggio, madri e figlie, padri e figli, dee e mortali. Nauplio, Teti, Aiace, Neottolemo, Ecuba, Polissena, Calipso, Nausica, Eupite – figure ai bordi della narrazione maggiore, travolte e stravolte nella loro vicenda mitica dal genio contorto di Ulisse. Dalle fonti antiche emergono le loro voci che, in concerto, compongono un grave atto d’accusa contro l’eroe.

Il libro è disponibile su: https://bit.ly/Contro_Ulisse_Salerno_Editrice_2021

Según las Metamorfosis de Ovidio, Júpiter engaña y deja embarazada a la hermosa ninfa Calisto cuando se encuentra apartada del cortejo de Diana, quien la expulsa al conocer la infracción de la castidad. En la obra de teatro La casa de Bernarda Alba de Federico García Lorca, una madre opresora vela por la pureza de sus hijas, pero un varón desafiará su autoridad. Mediante un análisis centrado en los personajes principales de cada obra, el presente trabajo tiene como objetivo demostrar la posible influencia de Ovidio en Lorca, gran conocedor de la tradición clásica.

In the Metamorphoses Ovid is a poet-mythographer, who avows, implicitly or
explicitly, his conformity or disagreement with the traditional versions of the
legends that he treats. The poem is not a real mythographic handbook, because
it uses of the epic poetry’s narrative principles. It is necessary to emphasize among
these principles the different levels of narration and the continuous ruptures of
the chronological thread, looking for the varietas, the surprise and attention of
the conspirational reader of the referential situations from the moment in which
it is written. These are very different principles from the quasi historical narrative
of Pseudo Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca. This is demonstrated by comparison of some
legends of the Met. I-V with the mythographic handbook.

Baltic amber’s popularity and its role in various cultures, from the prehistoric to the contemporary, is a very broad and complex subject. Therefore in this text I present an overview of selected cultural links and ways of using amber in different times.
There were various attempts to explain the origin of the Baltic fossil resin in the beliefs of many cultures. However, if we look closely at the mythological traditions, we will find that those legends are similar to each other. In Greece the origin of amber was associated with the story of Phaeton, the son of Helios the sun god. The story is told for example in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. They were very popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, translated into many languages, including by art theoreticians (Carel van Mander). The fragment concerning the story of Phaeton and the origin of amber was not often visualised by artists (Goltzius, Santi di Tito, Hans van Aachen).
Humankind has been using Baltic amber since time immemorial. The magical function of amber artefacts very quicky began to be combined with an aesthetical role. Early Modern objects made of multicoloured amber were diplomatic gifts, aristocratic wedding presents and an object of desire of dedicated collectors. It became, as it were, a mirabilium or treasure coveted by collectors. Surrounded with a peculiar aura and care, with time it became a collector’s item and finally also an object of research.