This paper considers some implications of Ovid’s concept of a perpetuum carmen by examining how the ‘narrative line’ of the poem takes shape. I focus on how the Metamorphoses can be described in ...terms of horizontality, or verticality, or both, and use the Cadmus and Achelous episodes to demonstrate how ‘linear’ entities, particularly snakes and rivers, can determine the progress of the stories in which they appear.
The publication of volume 12 of the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum has opened up a vast field of new manuscript material dealing with the medieval commentary tradition on Ovid’s ...Metamorphoses. Among the important French commentaries briefly discussed therein is Brussels, KBR 2100. The commentary was produced in northern France in the mid-thirteenth century and to date has received little detailed scholarly attention. In this article, I discuss the varied approaches adopted by the commentator in explicating Ovid’s text. The commentary contains some material in common with Arnulf of Orléans and the Vulgate Commentary. But it also adopts several quite unique approaches to glossing the text, including a fondness for outlining Ovid’s rhetorical flourishes and interpreting the text from a very Christian perspective.
This book discusses the use of drama as an intertext in the work of the 2nd century Latin author Apuleius, who wrote the only complete extant Latin novel, the Metamorphoses, in which a young man is ...turned into a donkey by magic. Apuleius uses drama, especially comedy, as a basic underlying texture, and invites his readers to use their knowledge of contemporary drama in interpreting the fate of his protagonist and the often comic or tragic situations in which he finds himself. This book employs a close study of the Latin text and detailed comparison with the corpus of dramatic texts from antiquity, as well as discussion of stock features of ancient drama, especially of comedy, in order to explain some features of the novel which have so far baffled Apuleian scholarship, including the enigmatic ending. All Latin and Greek has been translated into English.
Millennium transcends boundaries – between epochs and regions, and between disciplines. Like the Millennium-Jahrbuch, the journal Millennium-Studien pursues an international, interdisciplinary ...approach that cuts across historical eras. Composed of scholars from various disciplines, the editorial and advisory boards welcome submissions from a range of fields, including history, literary studies, art history, theology, and philosophy. Millennium- Studien also accepts manuscripts on Latin, Greek, and Oriental cultures. In addition to offering a forum for monographs and edited collections on diverse topics, Millennium-Studien publishes commentaries and editions. The journal primary accepts publications in German and English, but also considers submissions in French, Italian, and Spanish. If you want to submit a manuscript please send it to the editor from the most relevant discipline: Wolfram Brandes, Frankfurt (Byzantine Studies and Early Middle Ages): brandes@rg.mpg.de Peter von Möllendorff, Gießen (Greek language and literature): peter.v.moellendorff@klassphil.uni-giessen.de Dennis Pausch, Dresden (Latin language and literature): dennis.pausch@tu- dresden.de Rene Pfeilschifter, Würzburg (Ancient History): Rene.Pfeilschifter@uni- wuerzburg.de Karla Pollmann, Bristol (Early Christianity and Patristics): K.F.L.Pollmann@bristol.ac.uk All manuscript submissions will be reviewed by the editor and one outside specialist (single-blind peer review).
This article analyses the power dynamics that Ovid stages in the Metamorphoses as interplay of rhetoric, monumental art, and poetry. It argues that (1) the transformations of gods can be read as a ...metaphor of rhetoric subjecting the audience to the speaker's will; (2) that the products of the transformations of humans can be regarded as notional monuments to divine power; (3) that, for Ovid, all successful ideological constructs are based on a similar combination of rhetorical manipulation and "monumentalization"; (4) that, at the same time, Ovid casts metamorphosis as a product of the ability of the human imagination to recognize a human presence behind every non-human object, including the "monuments" constructed by superhuman powers; (5) that Ovid conceives of the "re-humanizing" effect of poetry as a function of its ability to make the audience recognize themselves in it; and (6) that the immortality that Ovid attributes to his own text is a function of his writing producing a similar effect on the readers.
Dynamics of nonlinear coupled driven oscillators is investigated. Recently, we have demonstrated that the amplitude profiles – dependence of the amplitude A on frequency Ω of the driving force, ...computed by asymptotic methods in implicit form as FA,Ω=0, permit prediction of metamorphoses of dynamics which occur at singular points of the implicit curve FA,Ω=0. In the present study we strive at a global view of singular points of the amplitude profiles computing bifurcation sets, i.e. sets containing all points in the parameter space for which the amplitude profile has a singular point.
•The effective equation for coupled nonlinear Duffing equations is investigated.•Implicit equations for amplitude profiles of nonlinear resonances are studied.•The bifurcation manifold in the parameter space is computed.•Examples of metamorphoses of dynamics at singular points are presented.•The method can be applied to other dynamical systems.
Literature and Identity in The Golden Ass of
Apuleius is the first English translation of a work published
in 2007 as Le Metamorfosi di Apuleio: Letteratura e
identità, by Luca Graverini. The ...second-century CE novel
The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, has proven to
be both captivating and highly entertaining to the modern reader,
but the text also presents the critic with a vast array of
interpretive possibilities. In fact, there is little consensus
among scholars on the fundamental significance of Apuleius' novel:
is it simply a form of narrative entertainment , or does it
represent some sort of religious or philosophical propaganda? Can
it be interpreted as a satire of fatuous belief in otherworldly
powers, or is it an utterly aporetic text? Graverini begins by
setting The Golden Ass in its ancient literary
context. Apuleius' playful defiance of generic conventions
represents a substantial literary innovation, but he is also taking
part in a tradition of narrative and satirical literature that
typically featured experimentation with genre. The interplay of
generic elements found in The Golden Ass reflects the
complexity of the author's cultural identity: Apuleius was a Roman
North African who had traveled widely throughout the Mediterranean
and enjoyed an extensive education in both Greek and Latin.
Graverini concludes with a study of the complex interaction of
these three dimensions of Apuleius' identity (African, Roman, and
Greek), and investigates what the narrative can tell us about the
culture of its readership. These cultural interactions affirm that
The Golden Ass aims to delight its readers as well as to
exhort them to religion and philosophy. Ben Lee's superb new
translation will make Graverini's groundbreaking study available to
a much wider scholarly readership.
This article explores the representation and thematic importance of time within Ovid’s account of Narcissus. It argues that perceiving Narcissus for the characters within Ovid’s narrative provokes a ...recognition of the experience of time that becomes central to both the tragic and erotic aspects of his story. In presenting Narcissus as both the subject of a diachronic narrative and a static image, Ovid at once uses the medium of his representation to illustrate his theme and makes his poem a mirror in which his own audience can apprehend the mutability of time.
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