The Face of Nature: Wit, Narrative, and Cosmic Origins in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Cover
Princeton University Press, 1997 - 238 Seiten

In these reflections on the mercurial qualities of style in Ovid's Meta-morphoses, Garth Tissol contends that stylistic features of the ever-shifting narrative surface, such as wordplay, narrative disruption, and the self-conscious reworking of the poetic tradition, are thematically significant. It is the style that makes the process of reading the work a changing, transformative experience, as it both embodies and reflects the poem's presentation of the world as defined by instability and flux. Tissol deftly illustrates that far from being merely ornamental, style is as much a site for interpretation as any other element of Ovid's art.

In the first chapter, Tissol argues that verbal wit and wordplay are closely linked to Ovidian metamorphoses. Wit challenges the ordinary conceptual categories of Ovid's readers, disturbing and extending the meanings and references of words. Thereby it contributes on the stylistic level to the readers' apprehension of flux. On a larger scale, parallel disturbances occur in the progress of narratives. In the second and third chapters, the author examines surprise and abrupt alteration of perspective as important features of narrative style. We experience reading as a transformative process not only in the characteristic indirection and unpredictability of Ovid's narrative but also in the memory of his predecessors. In the fourth chapter, Tissol shows how Ovid subsumes Vergil's Aeneid into the Metamorphoses in an especially rich allusive exploitation, one which contrasts Vergil's aetiological themes with those of his own work.

Originally published in 1997.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Im Buch

Inhalt

Introduction
3
Glittering Trifles Verbal Wit and Physical Transformation
11
Indecorous and Transformative Puns
22
Cephalus Procris and the Pun
26
The Pun Overheard
30
Irony and Metamorphic Wordplay Myrrha
36
Littera scripta manetOr Does It? Byblis
42
SelfCancelling and SelfObjectifying Witticisms
52
Disruptive Traditions
131
Propertiuss Tarpeia and Ovids Scylla
143
The Hecale in the Metamorphoses
153
Deeper Causes Actiology and Style
167
Ovids Little Aeneid
177
Aetiology and the Nature of Flux
191
Conclusion
215
G J Vossius on Syllepsis Oratoria
217

Wordplay Personification and Phantasia
61
Ceyx Alcyone and Morpheus
72
The House of Reception
85
The Asss Shadow Narrative Disruption and Its Consequences
89
Daedalus and Perdix
97
Cyclopean Violence and Narrative Disruption
105
Some Scandalous Passages
124
Syllepsis and Zeugma
219
Further Examples of Syllepsis in Ovid
221
References
223
Index locorum
231
Index
235
Urheberrecht

Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen

Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen

Bibliografische Informationen