Arachnes Netzwerke – Autorschaftsmetamorphosen bei Ovid, Malouf, Ransmayr

Abstract

The paper analyses three narrations connected not only by theme, but also by a concept of strong authorship: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life, and Christoph Ransmayr’s Die letzte Welt. It is interested in a poetological formation that is developping (or should one say: ‚is spinning out’?) literally beside this model of strong authorship originating from the epilogue of the Metamorphoses. In the centre of this formation (if this phrase is not a paradox in view of a phenomenon belonging to the periphery) is the weaver Arachne, who in Ovid’s text is transformed into a spider, because she is such an excellent weaver – a rival not tolerable for Pallas beside her. By this very metamorphosis, however, Arachne turns into a figure reflecting the fabrication of a text of which she is not the author beyond, but metonymically becomes part of her texture remaining connected with it by the thread released from her body. This thread produced by Arachne, the interlacement made of it leads the reader, if averting from the author’s instance in the centre of each of the texts, to a web organizing narration in Malouf’s „spiders’ tongue“ as well as in Cotta’s becoming more and more interwoven in Die letzte Welt.