NOVEMBER 13/14: Epic stories:
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READINGS: Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
selections from books 13 and 14 (Procopy
packet); Tuesday night class (Nov. 14), be sure to continue to the webnotes on Roman art and architecture
Summary: The Metamorphoses ("Transformations") of the Roman
poet, Ovid, is an epic poem of a different kind. This work is
familiar to many readers as an encyclopedic compilation of famous
mythological tales told by a master storyteller. Here you can
find many of the stories of Greek mythology that inspired countless
poems, paintings and other works of art. The poem, however, is
much more than a simple collection of stories. In his opening lines,
Ovid sets three goals. First, he will sing of “metamorphoses”:
each of his stories will be a tale of transformation. Secondly,
his song will be “seamless”; each story will merge smoothly into the
next. Thirdly, his poem will go from the creation to his own
times; this implies that there is a basic chronological framework - one
of the simplest forms of narrative - for his poem. In fact, these
goals are more ambitious and complex than they seem. The
transformations in his stories take place in an infinite number of
ways, occupying many different places in the structure of the
narrative. Secondly, Ovid uses a remarkable variety of devices to
slip from one story into the next. Lastly, Ovid plays with the
chronological framework of his poem - and of individual stories,
teasing us with the temporal links between stories and reminding us
that time is only one of many things that hold stories together.
I have chosen selections from book 13 and 14
of the Metamorphoses because they deal with the aftermath of the Trojan
War and some of the characters and stories that we have already met in
the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. Transformations are
crucial within each of the stories, but our discussions of Homer and
Virgil should help you see a more fundamental transformation taking
place in Ovid's work. Ovid takes the familiar stories of the
epics of Homer and Virgil and he utterly transforms them. Minor
episodes become major ones, major events are passed over in a single
line, and the story of Aeneas' journeys becomes just the framework for
a series of different and seemingly unrelated tales. Many stories are
told as embedded narratives from the points of view of different
characters, others are described through the description of works of
art (ekphrasis), the
familiar time sequence is distorted by the use of embedded narratives,
tragic episodes are transformed into parodies, comic scenes, or
romantic tales. Finally, Ovid's own emphasis on "transformations"
in each of these stories reminds us that authors may choose to tell any
story in their own way. There is no, one, true version of a
story: this, perhaps, is a commentary on Virgil's Aeneid in which
Virgil used prophecies and the idea of fate and destiny to make the
story of the Trojan War the basis for a grand authoritative, narrative
of Roman history.
OUTLINE OF OVID'S TEXT
INTRODUCTION
We take up the story near the end of
the Trojan War when Ulysses (Odysseus) has sailed to fetch the arrows
of Hercules. Here, Ovid alludes to well-known parts of the story
of the Trojan War. The Greeks are said to have received a
prophecy that they could not sack the city of Troy without the bow and
arrows of Hercules. These belonged to a Greek warrior,
Philoctetes, whom the Greeks had left behind on the island of Lemnos
because he was suffering from a terrible wound caused by a snake
bite. Typically, Ovid alludes only briefly to a familiar
story. In fact, he alludes to other famous stories as well: by
identifying Lemnos as "the country of Hypsipyle and of the renowned
Thoas, a land made notorious in the past, when its wives murdered their
husbands," he hints at part of the tale of Jason and the Argonauts, in
which it is said that the women of Lemnos had risen up against the men
and killed them all. Ovid quickly passes over the end of Troy,
"...the war that had dragged on so long was at last brought to a close.
Troy and Priam fell together....", and begins to tell a story of
transformation, the story of the transformation of Queen Hecuba,
Priam's wife, into a dog...
OUTLINE
HECUBA'S FATE
-short summary of the Sack of Troy (Notice how quickly - and irreverently -
Ovid passes over the dramatic events of the death of Priam, the sack of
the city, and the killing of Hektor's young son, Astyanax)
-the Trojan women are taken captive, and the Greeks sail
for Thrace (also the first stop on
Aeneas' voyage)
-Achilles' ghost appears and demands the sacrifice of
Polyxena, Priam's daughter
-Hecuba mourns Polyxena and finds the body of her son,
Polydorus, murdered by the Thracians (Aeneid
3.19-89)
-In revenge, Hecuba blinds the Thracian king, Polymestor;
before the Thracians can kill her, she is transformed into a dog
AURORA AND MEMNON
-Aurora, goddess of the dawn mourns the recent
death of her son, Memnon, the Ethiopian king, at Troy (Aeneid 1.692)
-She appeals to Jupiter, and Memnon's body, burning on the
funeral pyre, is transformed into a flock of birds, the Memnonides
AENEAS' ESCAPE AND JOURNEY (Notice Ovid's tongue-in-cheek way of
describing Aeneas' flight, "The hero Aeneas, the son of Venus, carried
away upon his shoulders the city's sacred images, and with them another
burden, equally sacred, his venerable father. Out of all his great
possessions, the good Aeneas chose to bear away this portion, and his
son Ascanius"): Ovid will use Aeneas' journey as a framework for
telling another series of stories, many of them involving embedded
narratives, while the tale of Aeneas' travels recedes to the background.
-KING ANIUS TELLS THE
STORY OF HIS DAUGHTERS: a double transformation: the daughters
turn anything they touch into corn, wine or oil, and the daughters are
eventually transformed into doves
-ANIUS GIVES AENEAS A DRINKING BOWL DECORATED WITH THE
STORY OF ORION'S DAUGHTERS (transformation: two young men, the
Coroni, rise from the ashes of their funeral pyre)
After a quick summary of Aeneas' journey to Crete (Aeneid 3.131-190), his encounter
with the Harpies on the Strophades (Aeneid
3.274-346), his sailing past Ithaca and Actium (Aeneid 3.349-365), and his visit to
Helenus (Aeneid 3.380-659),
Ovid continues with Aeneas' arrival at Sicily where several perils -
Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops - familiar from the Odyssey and
prophesied by Helenus await him...
-THE STORY OF SCYLLA: AS A GIRL, SHE SCORNED HER SUITORS,
AND TOLD STORIES TO THE SEA NYMPHS
-THE NYMPH, GALATEA, TELLS OF CYCLOPS'
LOVE FOR HER
-Polyphemus,
the Cyclops, sings a love song to Galatea
-Polyphemus surprises
Galatea and her lover, Acis; he kills Acis, and a transformation takes
place: Acis becomes a river
-GLAUCUS MEETS SCYLLA, TELLS STORY OF HIS TRANSFORMATION INTO A SEA GOD
-SPURNED BY SCYLLA, GLAUCUS COMPLAINS TO
CIRCE
-Circe seeks Glaucus' love, is rejected, and seeks revenge on Scylla
-With magical poisons and spells, Circe transforms Scylla into a
monster...Scylla later takes revenge on Circe "by robbing Ulysses of
his friends", a reference to Odysseus' loss of several of his men to
Scylla as he sailed past the monster.
With the reference to Ulysses/Odysseus, Ovid returns to the framing
story of Aeneas' voyage, quickly summing up his visit to Dido, their
love affair, his stop in Sicily, and the death of Palinurus.
While recounting Aeneas' crossing to Italy, Ovid describes the
transformation of the Cercopes into "a kind of mis-shapen
animal". He sums up Aeneas' visit to the Sibyl and his descent to
the underworld, and, instead, he uses the Sibyl's conversation with
Aeneas on the way out of the underworld to introduce the Sibyl's own
story.
-THE SIBYLTELLS HER
STORY, AND ANTICIPATES HER FUTURE TRANSFORMATION
On the shore, Aeneas meets another of the men of
Odysseus/Ulysses: Macareus. He recognizes Achaemenides, the Greek
whom Aeneas rescued from the land of the Cyclops...
-ACHAEMENIDES TELLS THE
STORY OF THE CYCLOPS; MACAREUS TELLS THE STORY OF THE NEXT PART OF
ODYSSEUS' JOURNEY, FOCUSING ON HIS VISIT TO CIRCE
-Macareus describes how Circe
transformed him and his friends into animals, and how Ulysses subdued
Circe and had her restore the men to their human form
-Macareus tells how one of Circe's
servant girls told him a story of a statue of a young man (Picus) with
a woodpecker on his head.
-THE SERVANT GIRL TELLS MACAREUS THE STORY OF PICUS
-Circe falls in love with Picus when she sees him hunting.
-She
tries to seduce him, but he rejects her.
-Circe transforms him into a woodpecker, and she transforms his men
into animals.
-Picus' wife, the nymph, Canens, mourns him and wastes away, vanishing
into thin air.
Ovid returns to the story of Aeneas and sums up his wars against Turnus
and the Rutulians. One of Turnus' men, Venulus, seeks help from
the Greek warrior, Diomedes, who had settled in Italy...
-DIOMEDES' STORY
-Diomedes describes the fall of
Troy, and his sufferings, at the hands of Venus, in its aftermath
-One of his men, Acmon, challenges
Venus, and he is transformed into a seabird
-STORY OF THE
TRANSFORMATION OF A SHEPHERD INTO AN OLIVE TREE
-STORY OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE TROJAN SHIPS INTO SEA
NYMPHS (Aeneid 9.87-159)
The story of Aeneas concludes with his transformation, at Venus'
request, into a god.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
-Describe the different ways in which Ovid introduces transformation
into his stories.
-Describe the different ways in which Ovid connects one story to
another. How does Ovid link these stories together thematically?
-What are the comic elements in Ovid's stories? How does he poke
fun at Virgil and Homer?
-Compare Ovid's use of the embedded narrative with Virgil's use of the
technique.
-How does Ovid link his stories with the framing story of the fall of
Troy and Aeneas' journey to Italy? How does he refer back to
Odysseus' journey?