Ovid [43 B.C.E.-?17 C.E.], Metamorphoses [8 C.E.],
Book 1, Book 3, and Book 4 excerpt ("Pyramis and Thisbe," Raeburn trans. pp. 133-9 (Raeburn trans. pp. 3-44 and 91-128)
The reading for today in Ovid's Metamorphoses will introduce you to two types of valuable classical learning: a catalog of tales representing what the Romans inherited from the Greeks, interpreted through the peculiar mentality that Ovid brings to his art; and a method of telling embedded and interlaced tales that produces a sense of narrative progress even as the goal of the progress grows ever more elusive. Comparisons of the former sort might be made with Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
In general, observe Ovid's use of the general theme of
transformation; follow his linkage of stories by embedding,
thematic paralleling, coordinating causal consequences, etc.;
compare his versions with places where you have access to Ovid's
source like the Homeric hymns, Homer, Euripides, etc.
Pay close attention to his
use of the act of tale‑telling in his own work,
and to his attitudes toward the gods, responsibility, and rulers.
1) What sorts of questions does
Ovid seem to have asked himself
about the earliest stage of creation, and what speculative answers does he
provide?
2) How does Ovid describe the means
by which Chaos is resolved into an
understandable Universe and what does the form of that
description tell you about Ovid's belief stance re: the gods?
3) How does the "Four Ages of Man"
theme (also see Hesiod, Works & Days) compare with modern notions
of human development? What
effects does this have on judgment and the "aesthetics" of
justice?
4) What is the crime of the
earliest "bad humans," and how does that relate to other religious systems'
definitions of fundamental human misbehavior?
5) What does the form of Ovid's
direct address to the emperor, Caesar Augustus, tell you about
the poet‑audience relationship in Imperial Rome?
How might that affect
readings of the tales Ovid is telling?
6) What poetic figure does Ovid use
to describe the effects of the flood?
How could it be a philosophical or aesthetic principle?
7) What sorts of values do Ducalion
and Pyrrha represent?
8) What conflict does Apollo's
defeat by Cupid celebrate?
9) Note Ovid's transitional device
when introducing the rape of Io by
Jupiter. How does this inset
tale relate to those following
(Mercury's of Pan and Syrinx) and preceding it (Apollo
and Daphne)? Apart from
their obvious similarities, do these
tales further comment on one another?
10) Cadmus is seeking his
sister, Europa, who was carried off by Jupiter in the form of a bull.
How does Cadmus' fate suggest the future of Thebes, itself, in the
Oedipus tales (including Oedipus Rex, The Seven Against Thebes,
and Antigone)?
11) What does the transformation of
Acteon mean as a punishment for having seen Diana bathing?
How might it be explained as another illustration of the figurative
principle used to describe the flood in #6 above?
12) How does Juno react to Semele's
pregnancy and what does the result have to do with Dionysus' character as a god
of wine?
13) Re: the tale of Teiresias'
prophecy, Echo and Narcissus‑‑ given the nature of Echo's handicap, why is it
proper that she loves Narcissus?
If this were a story about the desire for
beauty, what two kinds of desire do Echo's and Narcissus's
conditions describe, and how do their fates comment on the
problem of beauty in the real world?
14) What psychological problem is
dramatized in Pentheus' resistance to the worship of Dionysus?
15) What is the relationship
between Acoetes' tale and the Greek poetic tradition?
In what ways has he altered his source?
16) What happens to Pentheus when
he observes the celebrants of Dionysus without holy initiation, and how might
this relate to the problem in #14, above?