Ovid's Metamorphoses Research Articles

N. HEINSIUS'S FRAGMENTVM CAESENAS OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES REDISCOVERED

Among the manuscripts of Ovid's Metamorphoses used by N. Heinsius (1620–1681) and as yet unidentified or given up for lost is the so-called fragmentum Caesenas (Cs), the collation of which was not carried out by Heinsius himself but provided for him by the Hamburg jurist Lucas Langermann (1625–1686), who was a correspondent of Heinsius, Gronovius and Vossius, among others. According to M.D. Reeve, he was also responsible for adding these notes, using the siglum c, to Oxon. Bodl. Auct. S.V.5, which also includes the collations—by another hand—of A (= Vrbinas ueterrimus, our V2) and B (= Berneggerianus, our P2). The variants provided by this fragment affect lines 9.235–11.169 and 13.1–403, although this does not imply that these were the exact limits of its content, as we shall see below. Some of these variants ended up in the notes of the editions by Heinsius himself and by those who continued his work (the most prominent example being the admirable edition of Ovid by P. Burman, in 1727), and it was D.A. Slater who rescued the collation of Bodl. Auct. S.V.5 from obscurity when he included the greater part of the readings of c (the siglum he himself retains) among the rich store of information presented in his work. F. Munari included the fragment in his catalogue, clearly pointing to the uncertainty surrounding its dating (‘aetatis incertae’, the same expression as used by Slater) while adding the information that it was not at that time to be found in Cesena. The succinct information offered by Slater is used by I. Marahrens for her dissertation and by W.S. Anderson for his edition. R.J. Tarrant, in turn, explicitly states that the fragment is now lost. In the following pages, however, I will attempt to show that this fragment is not lost, but still preserved in the Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena.

Bad Flowers: The Implications of a Phytocentric Deconstruction of the Western Philosophical Tradition for the Environmental Humanities

Abstract This is an experimental review essay responding to Michael Marder's Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). The essay departs from the ordinary structure of comparing three books on a similar theme. Instead three of Marder's concepts, plant “nourishment,” “desire” and “language” are explored through readings of Gabrielle de Vietri's installation The Garden of Bad Flowers (2014), the story of Daphne from Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 CE) and Alice's encounter with talking flowers in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In some ways this essay is like a work of applied theory whereby philosophical concepts are used to advance interpretations of works of art and literature. But, at the same time and in contrast, the works of art and literature brought into dialogue with Marder help to interpret and mobilise the philosopher's concepts. Ultimately, this essay articulates how Marder's strikingly negative critical project is both lively and useful for the Environmental Humanities, especially the fields of ecocriticism and critical plant studies. Moreover, in contrast to many book reviews that begin with summaries of the text and end with suggestions as to where the author might go next, this essay follows that formula for the opening paragraphs, but then suggests where we as readers might go with some key concepts instead.

Monsters and monstrosity in Augustan poetry

Roman poets of the Augustan period reinvented monsters from Greek myth, such as Harpies, Furies, and the warring Centaurs and Giants. These monsters represented the attractions and dangers of novelty in various contexts, ranging from social values to artistic innovation. Rome's two great epics of the early principate, Vergil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, are both filled with mythical monsters. Like the culture that produced them, these poets were fascinated by unfamiliar forms despite their potential to disturb and disrupt. This book takes a fresh approach to the canonical works of Vergil, Ovid, and their contemporaries, contributing to a very recent turn toward marvels, monsters, and deformity in classical studies. The volume proposes that monstrosity was acutely topical during the birth of the principate, having featured in aesthetic debates of the Hellenistic age, while also serving as an established, if controversial, means for public figures to amaze the population and display their power. Monsters provided a fantastical means to explore attitudes toward human nature, especially in its relationship with sex. They also symbolized deformations of poetic form. Such gestures were doomed to replay the defeat of hypermasculine monsters yet, paradoxically, they legitimized poetic innovation. Monsters and Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry is the first full-length study of monsters in Augustan poetry, and the first metapoetic readingof monstrosity in classical antiquity. Intended primarily for scholars and students of classical Latin literature, it will also speak to interdisciplinary monster studies. It does not require knowledge of Latin or ancient Greek and quotations are translated.

Metamorphoses in Greco-Roman Antiquity. Concerning Ovid's Metamorphoses

Matter and form. It has been shown that the poet was clearly inspired by the ideas of the Stoic philosopher Posidonius of Apameia (ca. 135-51 BCE), even though we do not have detailed knowledge of Posidonius' system. Ovid was not a philosopher, and his poem is not a doctrinal presentation like that of Lucretius. In Book XV he barely gives a voice to Pythagoras for a 400-verse explanation of the reasons behind the rejection of animal sacrifice and meat consumption. Yet the underlying system i...

A Conversation with Brooke Ciardelli

Brooke Ciardelli was the founding artistic director of Northern Stage, a regional nonprofit theater located on the border of Vermont and New Hampshire, where she directed over sixty productions. Brooke has been honored by the New England Theatre Conference's Moss Hart Awards for Excellence in Theater three times, for All My Sons (2004), Les Miserables (2008), and Hamlet (2009). She directed a staged reading of Arthur Miller's then-unpublished Resurrection Blues with the playwright himself in residence. She has directed Patrick Stewart and Lisa Harrow in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and worked with playwright Sonja Linden on the American Premiere of The Strange Passenger.Ciardelli has also directed regional premieres of Wit, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Pride's Crossing, and No Orchids For Miss Blandish, as well as a significant number of large-scale musicals. As a creator, Ciardelli has adapted a number of classical pieces for the stage including Ovid's Metamorphoses, O Myths, and The Shrew Tamer by Shakespeare and John Fletcher. She is working on a stage adaptation of Boccaccio's Decameron for international production.Ciardelli received the Miller Estate's permission to create and direct a Muslim/Syrian version of A View from the Bridge. The production received its world premiere in a staged reading on Saturday evening, October 17, 2015, at the Arthur Miller Centennial Conference at St. Francis College. This interview took place February 6, 2015.Stephen Marino: Welcome. On behalf of the readership of The Arthur Miller Journal, I would like to thank you for your willingness to be here today to discuss your insight in directing Miller plays, particularly this exciting, new version of A View from the Bridge.I would like to start with your experiences as the founding artistic director at Northern Stage. You certainly cast a wide net in the plays you selected up there. I don't know if eclectic is quite the right word, but you staged classic tragedies from Agamemnon to Macbeth; many other plays are drawn from the twentieth-century dramatic repertoire, and you have done a fair share of musicals. I would like to know how, as an artistic director, you select those plays. Then how does that affect your work as a director working in such a mixture of styles and genres?Brooke Ciardelli: I do plays that I love. What I call great plays. If you are an artistic director, you are hired for your taste, your personal taste. So you have to start there, read the plays, and wow-give this as a present to the audience every night. It's a feeling of when you buy someone a really special birthday gift and it's wrapped up in the box. You know what's in it; you know how much they're going to like it, but they haven't opened it yet. So that's what I want to find in a play. To have that feeling about it. I ran the company for sixteen years and we did between seven and eight shows every year.SM: That is a lot of shows.BC: Yes, that is a lot of shows. They all ran three weeks; some of them ran as long as five. The area where the theater is located is fairly rural with a very large subscriber base. It is only one of four theaters in America that has such a small population density yet produces its own work at this level, which some may argue doesn't work. You don't have quite enough people.SM: So how do the preferences of your rural, but engaged, audience affect your choices?BC: It's a very smart community. My audience base did not grow up in the area. They maybe went to Dartmouth; maybe they wintered and did ski vacations in Vermont. They went out, lived their lives all over the world, and chose to come back and retire. Many of them are fairly young. It meant that they had seen world-class culture offerings and had established levels of expectations. When you deal with a subscriber audience-we had a very large subscriber base-that is very good for a theater. One person buys every show in the beginning of the season so the plays are not reviewed. …

“Each the Other's World Entire”: Intertextuality and the Worth of Textual Remembrance in Cormac McCarthy's The Road

In The Road Cormac McCarthy's coalescence of the narrative voice with the man's consciousness grants readers insight into the man's desperate struggle to locate or rely upon anything meaningful, an ordeal that often has him draw upon his inner reserves. Through textual remembrance, the man invokes works from his and our old, vanishing world and, engaging with them, he interrogates the possibility of sustaining significance and value in a new, broken world seemingly denuded of meaning. The novel's unobtrusive intertextual indicators of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, The Book of Job, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and The Book of Genesis provide insight into the narrative's moral concerns and the ways in which, in a novel where language sometimes seems to despair of itself, the man and the boy, “each the other's world entire”, strive to uphold their love and preserve their integrity, loyalty and humanity. In some small but not negligible part, McCarthy's narrative vindicates the worth of textual remembrance and the abiding legacy of such mouldy tales reclaimed from the ruins by McCarthy's narrator, the man, and the foster mother. Like the man's happiest, most perfect childhood memory, these stories are what we are left with “to shape the days upon”.

Translating the Classics into the vernacular in sixteenth‐century Italy

Whilst early‐ and mid‐fifteenth‐century Italian humanism had concentrated on ambitious new translations from Greek into Latin, rather neglecting the vernacular, the sixteenth century is characterized by a proliferation of vernacular works in all fields and, especially from the 1530s on, intense activity in translating classical works into Italian. This article discusses some material features of the original and translated publications under consideration, but especially explores linguistic choices and translation techniques used by three translators in a variety of classical texts: Antonio Brucioli (1487–1566), who translated among other things the texts discussed here, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, believed to be by Cicero (Rhetorica di Marco Tullio Cicerone, tradotta di latino in lingua thoscana, per Antonio Brucioli (Venice, 1538)), and Pliny's Naturalis historia (Historia naturale di C. Plinio Secondo. Nuovamente tradotta di latino in vulgare toscano per Antonio Brucioli (Venice, 1548)); Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara (1517–72), who earned lasting fame for his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, entitled De le Metamorfosi d'Ovidio libri III di Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara (Venice, 1553); and Francesco Baldelli (d. after 1587), who translated all of Caesar's histories in I commentari di C. Giulio Cesare da M. Francesco Baldelli nuouamente di lingua latina tradotti in Thoscana (Venice, 1554). These translations are considered in terms of their cultural and political context, linguistic and pragmatic characteristics, dissemination in the sixteenth century, and contribution to the ongoing development of the vernacular.

The Races of Poetry

THE IMAGE OF RACING is endemic to poetry. The Iliad culminates in a race: at the climax of the narrative, in Book XXII, Achilles chases Hector three times around the walls of Troy, in a pursuit that Homer specifically likens to a foot-race or a chariot-race. The image then returns in the following book, at the funeral games for Patroclus, which are dominated by actual races. Similar games, again with races as their most prominent feature, appear in both the Odyssey and the Aeneid. In Ovid's Metamorphoses the same motif – one character running after another – becomes not just an incident in the plot, as in earlier epics, but in a sense the main plot itself: of the different types of recurrent episode in Ovid's poem, the most conspicuous involves (typically) a male god chasing a nymph across the countryside. And in Dante's Inferno – to look no further – the motif becomes so central as to be nearly invisible. Almost every canto of the Inferno features sinners running, or trudging, after each other, round and round in a perversely endless, unwinnable race.

LOVE OR WAR? EROTIC AND MARTIAL POETICS IN CLAUDIAN'S <em>DE RAPTU PROSERPINAE</em>

This article treats genre, love, and violence in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae, with particular reference to the precedents of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Statius' Achilleid. The first part establishes the poem's varied generic voices (notably elegiac, epithalamic and martial epic). The second part ties the presence of competing martial and erotic voices to the poem's exploration of conflicting interpretations of the Dis-Proserpina union as exemplifying love or war. It highlights the potential for discord in the interpretation of the union as an example of love, especially in examples of symbols which can be approached from an epic perspective and from the elegiac or epithalamic sphere.

LOVE OR WAR? EROTIC AND MARTIAL POETICS IN CLAUDIAN'S DE RAPTU PROSERPINAE

This article treats genre, love, and violence in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae, with particular reference to the precedents of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Statius' Achilleid. The first part establishes the poem's varied generic voices (notably elegiac, epithalamic and martial epic). The second part ties the presence of competing martial and erotic voices to the poem's exploration of conflicting interpretations of the Dis-Proserpina union as exemplifying love or war. It highlights the potential for discord in the interpretation of the union as an example of love, especially in examples of symbols which can be approached from an epic perspective and from the elegiac or epithalamic sphere.

Daphne

Ad Libitum16 December 2014DaphneAda C. Rahn, MDAda C. Rahn, MDFrom Glen Ellyn, IllinoisSearch for more papers by this authorAuthor, Article, and Disclosure Informationhttps://doi.org/10.7326/M14-0822 Audio Reading - “Daphne” Audio. Michael A. LaCombe, MD, Annals Associate Editor, reads "Daphne," by A.C. Rahn. Your browser does not support the audio element. Audio player progress bar Step backward in current audio track Play current audio trackPause current audio track Step forward in current audio track Mute current audio trackUnmute current audio track 00:00/ SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breasts, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy.—Ovid's Metamorphoses... Author, Article, and Disclosure InformationAffiliations: From Glen Ellyn, IllinoisNote: Lines in italics taken from “An Essay on the Shaking Palsy,” by James Parkinson (originally published by Sherwood, Neely, and Jones [London, 1817]).Current Author Address: Ada C. Rahn, MD; e-mail, [email protected]com. PreviousarticleNextarticle Advertisement Audio Reading - “Daphne” Audio. Michael A. LaCombe, MD, Annals Associate Editor, reads "Daphne," by A.C. Rahn. Your browser does not support the audio element. Audio player progress bar Step backward in current audio track Play current audio trackPause current audio track Step forward in current audio track Mute current audio trackUnmute current audio track 00:00/ FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Metrics 16 December 2014Volume 161, Issue 12Page: 910KeywordsDisclosureEmotionsMuscular dystrophiesParalysisRunningWalking ePublished: 16 December 2014 Issue Published: 16 December 2014 CopyrightCopyright © 2014 by American College of Physicians. All Rights Reserved.PDF DownloadLoading ...

Under the mirror of the sleeping water: Poussin's Narcissus

A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/7KzR6IuNf08

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Fiction: “An Almost Theatrical Innocence”

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Fiction: “An Almost Theatrical Innocence”

Exercices furieux: A partir de l'edition de l'Orlando furioso De Franceschi (Venise, 1584). Ed. by ILARIA ANDREOLI.

In this edited volume ilaria andreoli collects the proceedings of the study day Autour de l'edition de l'Orlando furioso De Franceschi (Venise, 1584) held at the University of Caen-Basse Normandie in 2011. This symposium gathered together experts on the history of the book, art historians, and literary historians to discuss Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, using as their starting point the 1584 edition published in Venice by Francesco De Franceschi. In her acknowledgements Andreoli states that one of the aims of the study day was to ‘gather together specialists from different backgrounds, training, provenance and age, in order to explore interdisciplinary pathways’—this volume reflects very well these aims. The 1584 Orlando furioso edition is significant as a landmark edition both for the presentation and discussion of Ariosto's poem within Renaissance Italy, but also in its material aspects and paratextual annexes. Using this edition as a starting point, each chapter contributes to the exploration of the reception of the Furioso in Italy and across Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The chronological organization of the volume is particularly useful, as it contributes to a tracing of the trajectory of an Italian classic like the Furioso from the critical reception after the death of its author to its wider intersections with the figurative arts, drama, and the literary canon within a European context. After a concise and effective introduction by François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles, Ilaria Andreoli focuses on the fortune of the De Franceschi edition as an iconographic model and considers its location and significance within the activity of the printer, who worked primarily on the publication of illustrated scientific texts, including editions on botany, anatomy, zoology, architecture, and mechanical engineering. For his edition of Orlando Furioso De Franceschi used the text published in the 1556 Valgrisi illustrated edition with the commentary by Geronimo Ruscelli. Andreoli discusses the significance of the illustrations in the 1556 and 1584 editions in their use of perspective for the spatiotemporal organisation of the facts of each canto and their resemblance to cartographic aids in their organization and their indication of first names for each character. The last part of the chapter looks at the fortune of the edition as a model for other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century illustrated editions of literary texts, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata.

EPYLLION - (M.) Baumbach, (S.) Bär (edd.) Brill's Companion to Greek and Latin Epyllion and its Reception. Pp. xxvi + 640, ills. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Cased, €188, US$258. ISBN: 978-90-04-21432-3.

A Short Introduction to the Ancient 'Epyllion'. Manuel Baumbach & Silvio Bar Contributors Abbreviations 1. History and Development of the Term and Concept of the 'Epyllion' Before the Epyllion: Concepts and Texts Virgilio Masciadri On the Origins of the Modern Term 'Epyllion': Some Revisions to a Chapter in the History of Classical Scholarship Stefan Tilg Catullus 64: the Perfect Epyllion? Gail Trimble 2. The Archaic and Pre-Hellenistic Period The Songs of Demodocus: Compression and Extension in Greek Narrative Poetry Richard Hunter Demodokos' Song of Ares and Aphrodite in Homer' Odyssey (8.266-366): an Epyllion? - Agonistic Performativity and Cultural Metapoetics Anton Bierl Borderline Experiences with Genre: The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite between Epic, Hymn and Epyllic Poetry Manuel Baumbach Rhapsodic Hymns and Epyllia Ivana Petrovic The Pseudo-Hesiodic Shield and The Poetics of Deferral Peter Bing 3. The Hellenistic Period Pindaric Narrative Technique in the Hellenistic Epyllion Christine Luz The Hecale and Hellenistic Conceptions of Short Hexameter Narratives Kathryn Gutzwiller Miniaturizing the Huge: Hercules on a Small Scale (Theocritus Idylls 13 and 24) Benjamin Acosta-Hughes Herakles in Bits and Pieces: Id. 25 in the Corpus Theocriteum Thomas A. Schmitz Achilles at Scyros, and One of his Fans: The Epithalamium of Achilles and Deidameia (Buc. Gr. 157-158 Gow) Marco Fantuzzi 4. The Late Roman Republic and the Augustan Period epsiloniotasigmaf epsilonpieta kappaalphaiota epsilonlambdaepsilongammaepsilon alphasigmaf alphanu gammaepsiloniotanu: The Erotika Pathemata of Parthenius of Nicaea Jacqueline J.H.Klooster A Virgo infelix: Calvus' Io vis-a-vis Other Cow-And-Bull Stories Regina Hoschele The Tenth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses as Orpheus' Epyllion Ulrich Eigler 5. The Imperial Period The Fast and the Furious: Triphiodorus' Reception of Homer in the Capture of Troy Vincent Tomasso Musaeus, Hero and Leander: Between Epic and Novel Nicola Nina Dummler 'Museum of Words': Christodorus, the Art of Ekphrasis and the Epyllic Genre Silvio Bar The Motif of the Rape of Europa: Intertextuality and Absurdity of the Myth in Epyllion and Epic Insets Peter Kuhlmann 6. The Middle Ages and Beyond 'Epyllion' or 'Short Epic' in the Latin Literature of the Middle Ages? Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann & Peter Stotz Short Mythological Epic in Neo-Latin Literature Martin Robert Burns' Tam O'Shanter: a Lallans Epyllion? Ewen L. Bowie General Bibliography Indexes General Index Index of Passages Discussed

Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid by MAGGIE KILGOUR

BOOK REVIEWS 371 of minority rule on the Eastern empire (or indeed vice-versa), which, after all, saw the accession of the six-month-old Arcadius in 383 and the two-month-old Theodosius IIin 402. The book is very well produced, with few typographical errors, e.g. p.v n.5 should read ‘Szidat(2010)’ not 2011; in the bibliography the entry ‘Barnes, N.H.’ at the top of 340 should read ‘Baynes, N.H.’. The text cited of the Panegyrici Latini is in fact Mynor’s 1964 OCT (which Nixon and Rodgers reprinted in their 1994 translation and commentary,rather than offeringa new edition,asissuggested by the bibliography, 335). ALAN J.ROSS Howard College,UKZN.South Africa, alan.ross@wolfson.ox.ac.uk * * * Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid. By MAGGIE KILGOUR. Classical Presences. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xxiii + 373. $135.00. ISBN 978-0-19-958943-2. Maggie Kilgour’s Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid, presented as part of Oxford ’s Classical Presences series, delivers a robust examination of Ovid’s influence on Milton. Kilgour places particular emphasis on the top billing poetic works of Milton’s literary career (Comus, Paradise Lost, and Samson Agonistes) but does not hesitate over treating minor works as well. The study focuses on Milton as a poet reading Ovid within a cultural and historic milieu where Ovid and the received ‘readings’of Ovid were often shifting and disparate. As noted in the preface: “While studying Ovid closely, Milton was equally attentive to the reworkings of his great precursors: Dante, and especially his English ancestors, Shakespeare and Spenser. While noting their individual adaptations , Milton responds also to the fact that Ovid stands for a chain of continuity and metamorphic activity” (xiv). To untie the knots of Ovidian intertexts, knots that Milton himself unties and rebinds, is a bold undertaking. Despite being somewhat discursive, a feature that Kilgour confesses when she cautions that Milton does sometimes drop out of sight (xviii), the work nevertheless promises what it delivers: “an exercise in practical criticism that explores a specific relation between two verydistinct authors” (xviii). 372 BOOK REVIEWS After a preface, which sketches the straits and difficulties of Quellenforschung and surveys the ground to be covered, the introduction offers a collegial review and critique of the scholarly tradition that surrounds Milton’s classical and Ovidian inheritance. The first two chapters treat Milton’s early writings. Kilgour nests these discussions within careful analysis of early modern receptions of Ovid’s work and theiroften-antagonistic redeployment. “Choosing Ovids (1)” leads with Milton’s somewhat grotesque and puerile handling of the rapere motif in “On the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough”. She then pursues Comus in light of Milton’s handling of the ways Ovid could be competitively appropriated and re-presented. “Choosing Ovids (2)” revisits the Ovidian rape motif, and builds to an engaging discussion of poetry and politics surrounding Comus. The stress here is on Milton’s burgeoning political interests by way of Ovid’s Fasti. Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos and The Shepheardes Calender, as well as Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece, embroider the discussion. Here Kilgour also engages the agonistic legacy between libertine elegy and court masques on which Milton cut his teeth. She is, however, reluctant to assign Ovid too prominent a part in shaping Milton’s politics and chooses instead to emphasize the difficulty in disentanglingpoetry from life. Chapters three and four take up Paradise Lost. “Reflections of Narcissus”— probably the jewel in the crown—puts forward an insightful reading of Ovid’s tale of Narcissus as “the locus classicus of artistic self-reflection” (193). Kilgour begins the discussion with Satan’s creativity in the making of Sin, and his own metamorphosis into a serpent, before taking up Adam and Eve to explore the Narcissistic subtexts of their creation/separation, Eve’s gazing at her reflection, and the couple’s later recoupling. “Self-Consuming Artists” continues the discussion of Paradise Lost and looks to career intersections between Ovid and the image of the fallen artist. The concern here is invidia within the creative process. The conclusion, a chapter of its own and likely...

Beckett'sEmbersand the Modernist Ovid: a Tiresian Poetic?

This paper interprets the second Beckett radio play, Embers, as a miniature epic that reworks numerous myths from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Paradoxically exploiting an aural broadcast medium, Beckett thus creates, in the listener's imagination, a mythical series of interlocking visual ekphrases. Comparison of the earliest extant versions, the MS THR 70.3 holograph and MS 4664 typescript, also suggests that Beckett's Embers – after Eliot's The Waste Land – dramatises the revelatory afflatus of Orphico-Dionysiac ritual initiation. Though caricatured in Plato's parable of the cave, such mystical gnosis was later celebrated in Ovid's interwoven myths of Echo, Narcissus, and the blind shaman Tiresias.

William Morris's Tapestry: Metamorphosis and Prophecy in The Woodpecker

This essay discusses William Morris's adoption of trapestry in the 1880s in terms of its allegorization of the losses and gains of both historical and biological processes. processes of trapestry itself are considered in relation to the prophetic mode deployed by Morris in the verses written in his trapestries published in his Poems By the Way of 1891. essay centres on the example of the trapestry The Woodpecker (exhibited 1888) where Morris's woodpecker motif refers to the story of Picus from Ovid's Metamorphoses. context of metamorphosis leads to a discussion of the woodpecker's significance in nineteenth-century revisting of the theme of metamorphosis: Victorian theorizations of evolution and the evolutionary emergence of consciousness. essay discusses the morphology of form and the sequence of substitutions involved in sexual selection. declarative and the tacit aspects of Morris's trapestry are addressed in order to assess the potential for the elaboration of grand themes in a form of art that seemingly abjures the grandiose theatre of human action.

The Poet as Translator: Mary Wortley Montagu Approaches the Turkish Lyric

The Poet as Translator: Mary Wortley Montagu Approaches the Turkish Lyric

Ovid's Metamorphoses: A Source for Wordsworth's River in Book IX of The Prelude (1805, 1850)

Ovid's Metamorphoses: A Source for Wordsworth's River in Book IX of The Prelude (1805, 1850)