Ovid's Causes: Cosmogony and Aetiology in the Metamorphoses

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University of Michigan Press, 1994 - 206 Seiten
Ovid's Causes offers a new reassessment of the poet's longest and most difficult poem, the Metamorphoses. This poem has long been denied epic stature because of its stylistic and thematic diversity. K. Sara Myers demonstrates that the poem must be understood as the inheritor and interpreter of the Roman tradition of cosmological epic. She situates the poem in the traditions and conventions of Roman poetry and considers the ways in which it both fulfills and overturns the expectations of the epic genre.

The first and final chapters of this book examine the scientific and cosmological framework of the poem. Ovid's juxtaposition of scientific and mythological explanations is an aspect of his sophisticated manipulation of truth and fiction, and of the claims of philosophical poetry and mythological poetry.

This illuminating study presents much useful material for students of Roman poetry or of Greek literary influences that profoundly influenced its development. Students and scholars of ancient poetical traditions will likewise find much of interest.

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Inhalt

Cosmogonic Metamorphosis and Natural Philosophy in
27
Callimachean Aetia and Framed Aetiological Narratives
61
Italy and Aetiological 95 55
95
Pythagoras Philosophy and Paradoxography
133

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