An intertextual analysis of the novel Girl Meets Boy and the use of feminist and queer theory by Ali Smith in her reception of the tale of Iphis from Ovid's Metamorphoses (9.666-797)

In this thesis I discuss Ali Smith’s reworking of Ovid’s tale of the girl-boy Iphis from his Metamorphoses (9.666-797) in her 2006 novel Girl meets boy. I examine how Smith has brought Ovid to life for twenty-first century readers, first through an exploration of feminist and queer critical readings of Ovid and the influence of those theories on Smith’s method of classical reception, and secondly through an analysis of intertextual references. My matrix of interpretation draws upon the theories and experimental writing of Julia Kristeva, Monique Wittig and Judith Butler, alongside an examination of intertextual allusions to Ovid himself, Virginia Woolf, John Lyly and William Shakespeare. I argue that Ovid readily lends himself to feminist readings of his work, and that by combining critical theory and creative writing, Smith establishes a new and liberating queer feminist model for classical reception

Empedoclean Elegy: Love, Strife and the Four Elements in Ovid\u27s Amores, Ars Amatoria and Fasti

In this dissertation, I examine Ovid\u27s use in the Amores, Ars Amatoria and Fasti of the concepts of love, strife and the four elements, which were closely identified with the philosopher-poet Empedocles in antiquity. My dissertation has two parts: in the first I demonstrate that in the Amores and Ars Amatoria Ovid connects themes fundamental to his elegiac poetics, such as the interaction of love and war, to the Empedoclean principles of love and strife. This is a means for Ovid of relating his elegy to the epic tradition, in which Empedocles was an important figure. At the same time I argue that Ovid suggests that there are certain features of the form and content of elegy that render it uniquely Empedoclean, such as the cyclical alternation of the hexameter and pentameter verses of the elegiac couplet, which are identified with war and love respectively in Ovidian poetics. This conception of elegy\u27s form serves as the foundation of Ovid\u27s use of the interaction between elegy and epic, amor and arma as the building-blocks of much of his poetry. Ovid\u27s creative use of Empedoclean themes is most extensive in the Fasti, which is the elegiac poem of Ovid\u27s whose relation to epic is the most intense. In the programmatic Janus episode in book 1 of the Fasti Ovid has the god Janus describe an Empedoclean cosmogony that encourages us to interpret subsequent features of the poem against the background of an Empedoclean cosmos: in this light, the centrality in the poem of Mars and Venus (i.e. the months of March and April) and its interest in the concepts of concordia and discordia acquire a new significance. I demonstrate, furthermore, that Ovid\u27s use of Empedocles illuminates not only our understanding of the poetics of the Fasti, but also its politics. Ovid uses Empedoclean physics as part of his representation in the Fasti of cyclical or non-teleological time and the pattern of ceaseless change. These representations of time and history complicate the poem\u27s treatment of key Augustan tropes such as the pax Augusta, the Golden Age and the urbs aeterna

Ovid\u27s Satirical Successors in the Early Imperial Period

In this dissertation, I examine the early reception of Ovid in satirical authors from the time of Ovid’s death in 17 AD through to the early years of Neronian rule. I argue that in this earliest period of Ovidian reception, writers of satire, broadly defined, were reading and engaging with Ovid in their own writings and treating him as an important predecessor in facing the problem of how to write under restrictive, imperial circumstances. In each chapter, I focus on a single text — Phaedrus’ Fables, Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis and Persius’ Satires — and consider how each author interacts with Ovid to develop his own position as social critic under imperial rule and to communicate ideas that are difficult or dangerous to express more openly. In the first chapter I argue that Phaedrus situates both the struggles of the animals in the world of the fable and poets writing under powerful regimes as post-Augustan and post-Ovidian. In the second chapter I examine how Seneca engages both with the Metamorphoses and the Fasti as prequels for the action of the Apocolocyntosis to consider what kind of sequel the Apocolocyntosis is. In the final chapter I argue that in Satire One Persius provides a picture of contemporary poets who are trying hard to be like Ovid, but are failing to do it well, while also engaging himself with Ovid as a poet who had important insights about the difficulties of living and writing under empire that Persius makes applicable to his own situation as an imperial satirist. In each chapter I demonstrate how the author forges connections with Ovid in his own individual ways, but across the three authors I argue that Ovid’s poetry provides a point of intersection at which two important issues for these satirical authors meet, the theme of freedom of speech and the problem of how to face the pressures of the imperial discourse. The conjunction of these themes provides a shared basis for this strand of Ovidian reception at this time period

Speech, community, and the formation of memory in the Ovidian exilic corpus

textAt Tristia 1.117-120, Ovid refers directly to his Metamorphoses, equating his exilic situation with that of characters from his magnum opus, stating that his parvus liber should report to those in Rome that the vultus of his fortune may now be listed among the mutata corpora. This statement, placed in the opening poem of Ovid’s exilic project, is invested with programmatic value and begs the following questions: How has Ovid been changed? Why does he compare himself to characters from the Metamorphoses? What exactly is the payoff – for Ovid and the audience – of such an intertextual move? This dissertation explores these questions, arguing that this line is central to Ovid’s conception of his entire ‘exilic project’. By equating himself with his earlier characters, Ovid makes himself a character who undergoes the same transformations as they did; thus, his exilic transformation should be interpreted as occurring in the same fashion as transformations in the Metamorphoses. Those transformations, it is argued, were conceived of in terms of speech, community, and memory: whenever a character is transformed, that character suffers speech loss, is exiled from community, and is forgotten. In his exilic project, Ovid portrays himself as passing through these same steps. Furthermore, Ovid depicts his transformation in this way with an eye towards memory: reformulating how his exile would be perceived by his audience and how he, as a poet, would be remembered by posterity. In Chapter One, I begin by 1) setting the study within current scholarly trends and 2) examining what it meant to be ‘speechless’ in Ovid’s Rome. In Chapter Two, I set out the model for speech loss and community for the characters of the Metamorphoses. In Chapter Three, I turn to how Ovid applies this model to himself in his exilic project. In Chapter Four, I connect this model to memory, arguing that Ovid focuses on this model of speech and community because he, as an exile, is attempting to place himself back within the social frameworks of his community not only to be remembered, but to be remembered as he wants to be remembered.Classic

Complementarity and Contradiction in Ovidian Mythography

It stands to reason that mythographic sources should have played a role in the composition of Ovid\u27s works, and recent work suggests more and more that this must be the case. But the complex motives behind Ovid\u27s engagement with this tradition have proven difficult to comprehend and to integrate with Ovidian criticism as a whole. There are some fairly clear reasons why this is so. One is the under­standable tendency of critics to emphasize Ovid\u27s use of poetic sources organized along mythographic lines, such as Nicander\u27s Het­eroeumena and, more recently, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, rather than of conventional prose mythographies. But a greater ap­preciation of what Ovid may owe to his fellow poets, while obviously a good thing in itself, should not be allowed to obscure his debt to mythographic treatises and encyclopedias. Another factor is that many of Ovid\u27s works flaunt their relationships to various prose gen­res other than mythography. This the Ars amatoria does by imitating earlier didactic poetry of the metaphrastic tradition, while the Heroides and the exile poetry, in their different ways, thematize their relationship to prose letters. In the case of the Fasti, the obvious importance of the calendar itself as the primary structural model for the poem and the specific verbal parallels that can be found in a few specific calendars, especially the Fasti Praenestini, have tended to dis­tract attention away from the potential influence of other prose genres. As for the Metamorphoses, it now seems clear that the genre of universal history contributed in significant ways to the architec­ture of that poem. But it is still obviously worth investigating the extent to which the concerns of prose mythographers in particular influenced Ovid\u27s treatment not only of individual myths but espe­cially of the relationships among them. Some important preliminary work has been done, and as an ex­ample of how any number of more focused studies might fit into a larger picture, I adduce a selection of examples from the Heroides, the Metamorphoses, and the Fasti to suggest how the characteristic concerns of prose mythographers inform all three poems and of how Ovid transforms what he borrows. In the process, I identify two as­pects of Ovidian poetics, complementarity and contradiction, that greatly enrich his treatment of mythographic material. Finally I of­fer some tentative conclusions and raise a few questions to indicate what I think are some productive avenues of further investigation

Ovid, the Fasti and the stars

According to Quintilian, poetry cannot be fully understood without a good knowledge of the stars. As one example he cites the fact that poets frequently indicate the time of year by the rising and setting of stars and constellations, a device familiar to us from Hesiod onwards.1 For Quintilian, who had the benefit of a stable civil calendar, there may have seemed little reason beyond a desire for poetic expression to specify the date in this manner: but before Caesar’s calendar reforms in 45 BC, the appearance and disappearance of certain stars just before sunrise and just after sunset provided a much more regular guide to the year than the erratic calendars of Greece and Rome, which were often out of step with the solar year.2 It is therefore not surprising to find the same method of specifying the date in prose authors too;3 and lists of these stellar phenomena, arranged in various calendar-like formats, are found in both texts and inscriptions. These lists, known as parapegmata, can be traced back to fifth century Greece, but the tradition may be considerably older.4 Whatever our reaction to Quintilian’s claim, it is certainly the case that a good knowledge of the stars is important for a full understanding of Ovid’s calendar poem, the Fasti. To a large extent the poem presents itself as a poetic version of the Roman calendar: each book covers a different month, and as the year and the work progress, Ovid marks the dates of various religious festivals and historical events, as in the real fasti. However, unlike many of the extant fasti, Ovid combines this material with material from the parapegmatic tradition, giving dates for the rising and setting of various stars and constellations, and for the journey of the sun through the zodiac. The inclusion of the constellations – and of the aetiological tales explaining their presence in the sky – enables Ovid to introduce a variety of Greek myths into the Roman calendar, where they would otherwise have no place

Was Ovid a Silver Latin Poet?

published or submitted for publicatio

Politicizing Apollo: Ovid\u27s Commentary on Augustan Marriage Legislation in the Ars Amatoria and the Metamorphoses

Augustan propaganda surrounding Apollo provided the perfect literary device through which Augustan poets could express their sentiments about the new regime. Augustus transformed Apollo from a relatively insignificant god in the Roman pantheon to his own multi-faceted god whose various attributes were meant to legitimize his new position within the Roman Empire. In this thesis I discuss how Ovid uses Augustus’ political affiliation with Apollo to comment on Augustan marriage legislation in two of his texts. In Ovid’s manual on seduction, the Ars Amatoria, he denies poetic inspiration from Apollo at the beginning of his work, preferring instead to draw from his own experiences. However, Ovid seemingly contradicts himself by having Apollo appear later on to offer him advice. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid ridicules Apollo’s failed pursuit of Daphne. However, Apollo is seemingly victorious after all, since he uses Daphne’s laurel as his perpetual victory symbol. In both these instances, Ovid veils his political commentary by initially ridiculing Apollo in matters of love, only to seemingly glorify him shortly after. By excluding Apollo from matters of love, Ovid indirectly is disapproving of Augustus’ involvement in social affairs in Rome. Ovid proves to be a master of language yet again as he plays with the literary tradition and political implication of Apollo in these two texts to convey his discontent regarding Augustan marriage legislation

Reconstructing Home in Exile: Ovid's Tristia

This thesis explores the physical landscapes and social interactions that form Ovid's home in Rome, as well as his vision of a transcendent home made possible through poetry. My case-studies will be poems from Ovid's Tristia in which he either directly reconstructs home or provides a photographic negative image of home by highlighting the opposite: the barbaric. I will spend the first chapter examining Ovid's construction of home's physical landscape. In Tristia 3.10 and 3.12, Ovid recreates Rome as a sort of negative image of Tomis. Rome is what Tomis is not. In Chapter Two, I will look at Ovid's reconstruction of social interaction; alienated in Tomis, he maintains his connections in Rome through his absent presence, as exemplified in Tristia 3.5. But home for Ovid is more than Rome. In Chapter Three, I will examine Ovid's position as a sacred vates who can, through his poetry, have a transcendent home on Mount Helicon. Tiberius's future triumph in Germany (Tristia 4.2) gives Ovid the opportunity to join himself to Caesar's triumph; his poem becomes the symbolic declaration of his own victory over the world. His letter to his daughter Perilla (Tristia 3.4), who is also a poet, reveals that poetry gives Ovid a companionship with her even while he is absent; poetry allows him friendships that spans any distance. I will also examine Tristia 4.10, Ovid's autobiography, as a further example of Ovid's transcendent home on Mount Helicon. He spent his boyhood on Mount Helicon, and in his early years he becomes known and read in the city; in exile he finally becomes known and read in the whole world