(Proto-)phantastische Techniken komplexen Erzählens und Visualisierens in Ovids Metamorphosen und in aktuellen Kinoblockbustern

Abstract

Recent philological inquiry and reception studies have pointed out that the innovative and highly allusive mythological encyclopaedia of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c. 8 AD) is based on a postmodernist poetics which seems to exert a considerable influence on contemporary fantastic literature and other fantastic genres and media.This contribution focuses on the question in which ways the phantastic narrative elements of the Metamorphoses (e.g. all-pervasive change of forms; mythical creatures, gods and demigods as characters in human contexts of action and conflict structures) are accentuated by techniques of complex narration and pre-cineastic textual visualization. By unfolding a typology of external and internal narrators/focalizers and a functional analysis of selected internal narrations, Ovid’s versatile arrangements of narrating and reviving myths are proved to have been proto-fantastic techniques of complex narration. The creative potential and lasting power of Ovid’s poetics is exemplified by the adaptation of Ovid’s story about Erysichthon and Hunger in Jane Alison’s novel The Love Artist (2003).The second part of the paper explores the cinematographic making and presentation of narrations and hybridcreatures inspired by Ovid in recent blockbuster movies. Ovid’s hyperrealistic and effective descriptions of central stories and characters of the Metamorphoses turn out to be an important inspiration for filmmakers. Detailed analysis shows that digital animation techniques back the reanimation of Ovidian elements such as Medusa’s individual snake hair and panorama flights on Pegasus in front of a green screen. Apartfrom that, the Hydra is staged as digitally created huge fire-breathing dragon with 3D flames. The Homeric and Ovidian cyclops Polyphemus reappears as a mechatronic super robot wearing a kilt. These expensive and artful special effects can be interpreted as a kind of hyper imitation of Ovidian visualization. At the end of the contribution. we discuss the aesthetic ambiguity of such vivid action elements in ancient and contemporary narratives.Publisher's note: This article was originally published as part of issue 8.1. This has been updated to note that this article is part of issue 7.2.