Metamorphoses
The metamorphoses (Metamorphoseis, in Latin; from the Greek μεταμόρφωσις, 'transformation'), by the Roman poet Ovid, is a poem in fifteen books that narrates the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar, freely combining mythology and history. It was finished in the year 8 AD. C.[citation required]
This literary work is considered a masterpiece of the golden age of Latin literature. One of the most widely read classical works of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, The Metamorphoses inspired many artists, including Titian, Velázquez, and Rubens, and continues to have a profound influence on Western culture.
Content
It is a work that is difficult to classify, somewhere between epic and didactic. It was written in hexameters and consists of more than 250 mythological narratives that follow one another in time from the origin of the world to the transformation of Julius Caesar into a soul star, describing the physical changes that the different divinities make to achieve different purposes, Greek and Roman.
It is considered one of the most popular works on mythology, a jewel of Roman literature, which became the most well-known work by medieval writers and therefore had a great influence on medieval poetry.
Transmission of the work
No extant specimens from antiquity, complete or nearly complete manuscripts date from the 11th century. The greatest contribution to the tradition was the work of Nicolaus Hensius who collated more than 100 manuscripts between 1640 and 1652.
Main Episodes
- Book I: Cosmogony, Ages of Man, Giants, Lycaon, Daphne, Io;
- Book II: Faeton, Calisto, Jupiter and Europe;
- Book III: Cadmo, Acteón, Eco, Narcissus and Penteo;
- Book IV: Pyramus and Tisbe, Leucótoe and Clitia, Salmacis and Hermaphrodito, Mineides, Perseus and Andromeda;
- Book V: Fineo, Typhoon, the Rapture of Proserpina, Alfeo and Aretusa, the Piérides;
- Book VI: Aracne, Níobe, Tereo, Filomela and Procne, Bóreas and Oritía;
- Book VII: Medea, Céfalo and Procris;
- Book VIII: Niso and Escila, Dadalo and Icarus, Philemon and Baucis;
- Book IX: Heracles, Galantis, Dríope, Yolao and the children of Calírroe, Biblis, Ifis;
- Book X: Euridice, Jacinto, Pigmalión, Mirra, Adonis, Atalanta, Cipariso;
- Book XI: Orpheus, Midas, Peleo and Tetis, Dedalion and Quíone, Alcíone and Ceix, Ésaco;
- Book XII: Ifigenia, Cicno, Centauros, Céneo, Achilles;
- Book XIII: Ayax Thelamon, Iliupersis, Eneas;
- Book XIV: Escila, Eneas, Vertumno and Pomona, Rómulo and Hersilia;
- Book XV: Pythagoras, Hippolyte, Asclepius, Caesar.
Themes
The different genres and divisions of the narrative allow Metamorphoses to show a wide range of themes. Scholar Stephen M. Wheeler notes that "metamorphosis, mutability, love, violence, art and power are just some of the unifying themes that critics have proposed over the years".
Metamorphosis
In nova fert animus mutatas says forms / corpora;
Metamorphosis or transformation is a unifying theme among the Metamorphoses episodes. Ovid makes its importance explicit in the first lines of the poem: In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora; ("I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities;"). Accompanying this theme is often violence, inflicted on a victim whose transformation becomes part of the natural landscape. This theme amalgamates the much-explored opposition between hunter and hunted and the thematic tension between art and nature.
There is a great variety between the types of transformations that occur: from human to inanimate object (Nile), constellation (Crown of Ariadne), animal (Perdix); from animal (ants) and fungus (mushrooms) to human; of sex (hyenas); and colored (pebbles). The metamorphoses themselves are often situated metatextually within the poem, through grammatical or narrative transformations. Other times, the transformations are developed in a humorous or absurd key, so that, little by little, "the reader realizes that they are kidding him", or questions or subverts the the very nature of the transformation. This phenomenon is but one aspect of Ovid's extensive use of illusion and disguise.
Influence
Few works of classical antiquity, neither Greek nor Roman, have exerted such a continuous and decisive influence on European literature as Ovid's Metamorphoses. The rise of the French, English and Italian national literatures in the Late Middle Ages cannot be fully understood without taking into account the effect of this extraordinary poem. The only rival we can find in our tradition to equal the pervasiveness of the literary influence of the Metamorphoses is perhaps (and I emphasize perhaps) the Old Testament and the works of Shakespeare. Ian Johnston
The Metamorphoses have had a considerable influence on literature and the arts, particularly in the West; scholar A. D. Melville says that "it may be doubted whether any poem had as great an influence on the literature and art of Western civilization as the Metamorphoses". Although most of the accounts of him do not come from Ovid himself, but from writers such as Hesiod and Homer, for others the poem is the only source for him.
The influence of the poem on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer is extensive. In The Canterbury Tales, the story of Coronis and Phoebus Apollo (Book II 531-632) is adapted to form the basis of The Manciple's Tale. The story of Midas (Book XI 174-193) is referred to and appears - albeit heavily altered - in The Bath Wife's Tale. The story of Ceyx and Alcyone (from Book IX) is adapted by Chaucer in his poem The Duchess's Book, written to commemorate the death of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster and wife of John of Gaunt.
The Metamorphoses was also a considerable influence on William Shakespeare. His Romeo and Juliet is influenced by the story of Pyramus and Thisbe (Metamorphoses Book IV); and, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a group of amateur actors put on a play about Pyramus and Thisbe. Shakespeare's early erotic poem Venus and Adonis expands on the myth in Book X of the Metamorphoses., and the text of the Metamorphoses is used within the play so that Titus can interpret his daughter's story. Most of Prospero's resignation speech in Act V of The Tempest is taken verbatim from a speech by Medea in book VII of the Metamorphoses.
Other English writers for whom the Metamorphoses were an inspiration include John Milton —who made use of them in Paradise Lost, considered his masterpiece— and Edmund Spenser. In Italy, the poem was an influence on Giovanni Boccaccio (the story of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in his poem L'Amorosa Fiammetta) and Dante.
During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, mythological themes were frequently depicted in art. The Metamorphoses were the main source of these narrations, so the term "ovidiano" in this context it is synonymous with mythological, even though some frequently depicted myths are not found in the work. Many of the Metamorphoses stories have been the subject of paintings and sculptures, most notably at this time. Some of Titian's best-known paintings depict scenes from the poem, such as Diana and Callisto, Diana and Actaeon, and Death of Actaeon. These works are part of La "poesie de Titian, a collection of seven paintings derived in part from the Metamorphoses, inspired by ancient Greek and Roman mythologies, which are gathered at the Titian exhibition at The National Gallery in 2020. Other famous works inspired by the Metamorphoses are Pieter Brueghel's painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and the sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini Apollo and Daphne. The Metamorphoses also permeated art theory during the Renaissance and Baroque, with its idea of transformation. n and the relationship of the myths of Pygmalion and Narcissus with the role of the artist.
Although Ovid was popular for many centuries, interest in his work began to wane after the Renaissance, and his influence on writers of the XIX was minimal. Towards the end of the XX century his work began to be appreciated again. Ted Hughes collected and recounted twenty-four passages from the Metamorphoses in his Tales of Ovid, published in 1997. In 1998, Mary Zimmerman's stage adaptation Metamorphoses i> opened at the Lookingglass Theatre, and the following year there was an adaptation of Ovid's Tales by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Early in the century XXI, the poem continues to inspire and be recounted through books, films, and plays. A series of works inspired by Ovid's book through Tragedy of Diana and Actaeon have been produced by the French collective LFKs and their film/theater director, writer and visual artist Jean-Michel Bruyere, including the 360° interactive audiovisual installation Si poteris narrare, licet ("if you can talk about it, then you can do it") in 2002, 600 short films and film "media" of which 22,000 sequences have been used in the 360° 3D audiovisual installation La Dispersion du Fils from 2008 to 2016, as well as an outdoor performance, "Une Brutalité pastorale&# 3. 4; (2000).
Metamorphoses in music
The Metamorphoses was used by the English composer Benjamin Britten in a work for solo oboe entitled Ovid's Six Metamorphoses, which evokes the imagery of the work.
Infinite examples in baroque music used episodes from The Metamorphoses for the plot of cantatas, serenades and operas.
Metamorphoses in film and TV
During the XX century, various adaptations of several of the Metamorphoses myths were made to the cinema, such as My Fair Lady (1964), starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn and inspired by the myth of Pygmalion, present in The Metamorphoses. In the XXI century, producer Pedro Alonso Pablos adapted several of the myths of The Metamorphoses in his mini-series Ovid's Metamorphoses.
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