THE INSTITUTE OF HIGHER EDUCATION OVID OF SULMONA THE LICEO GINNASIO OVID.
Ovid
description
Transcript of Ovid
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)