OVIDTHE METAMORPHOSES

LIFE OF OVIDBorn March 20, 43 BC

20 BC- publishes first book of poetry

8 AD- exiled by Augustus to Romania

17 AD- Ovid dies in exile

Statue of Ovid, Constanta, Rom

ania (Ettore Ferrari, 1887)

WORKS OF OVID• Amores- love poems, often shorter, focus on a particular mistress• Heroides- letters from epic and mythic women to their husbands• Medicamina Faciei Feminae- a comedic book about women’s cosmetics and

beauty tips• Ars Amatoria- poems about how to make love (to people that you are not

married to)• Remedia Amoris- the sequel to Ars Amatoria, about how to end relationships• Fasti- poems about feasts and festivals and the myths behind them• Metamorphoses- poem of epic length, compilation of different myths• Tristia- sorrowful poems about life in exile• Epistolae ex Ponto- letters written by Ovid to family in friends in Rome seeking

to end his exile

THE METAMORPHOSES15 books

Tales within tales

Creating of the world through glory of Rome

Contrasts charming/violent, grotesque/hilarious

No coherent plot

Complex, flexible structure evident

Each story has a transformation

Structure, theme, meaning cohesive within books and individual myths

Compilation of mythsFountain of Diana and Actaeon, Royal Palace at Caserta, Naples (Persico, Burnelli, Solari), late 18th century

Sources of Myth

• Oral traditions mentioned by Homer• Theogony (Birth of the Gods) by Hesiod• Tragedy- Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides• Earlier and Later Greet poets: Pindar,

Bacchylides, Apollonius of Rhodes, Callimachus

• Roman model of combining myth and history: Livy, Catullus, Virgil

• Ovid picks, alters and twists the original myths into non-canonical “modern” versions

• For many myths, only Ovid’s version survives while the “real” version is lost

Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itys, Rubens, 1638

INFLUENCE- SHAKESPEARE

By 1483, translated into all Romance languages and

English

Midsummer Night’s Dream – play within a play,

Pyramus and Thisbe

Star Crossed lover examples in Ovid inspire Romeo

and Juliet

Thisbe- John Waterhouse, 1909

INFLUENCE- LATER POETS

Tales of lovers and wonders inspire courtly

poets and Arthurian legends

Influence style, themes of English poets

Spenser, Milton

Oscar Wilde- references to Metamorphoses and

Fasti

Narcissus- Caravaggio, 1599

APOLLO AND DAPHNE

Apollo and Daphne, Antonio del Pollaiolo, 1470.

Apollo and Daphne- Bernini, 1625

FALL OF ICARUS

Fall of Icarus- Jacob Peter Gowy, 1635

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Bruegel, 1558

PYGMALIONMade into play by George Bernard Shaw 1914Film adaptation- 1938Transformed into My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn 1964Transformed (again) into Pretty Woman starring Julia Roberts, 1990Inspired Vertigo, directed by Alfred Hitchcock 1958

ORPHEUSBlack Orpheus (1959) –set at Carnaval in Rio De Janeiro

Orpheus Descending- play by Tennessee Williams, set in 1940s Mississippi

made into film The Fugitive Kind in 1959 starring Marlon Brando

Orphic Trilogy directed by Jean Cocteau

The Blood of a Poet (1930)

Orpheus (1950)

Testament of Orpheus (1960)