Description
Book SynopsisOffers an interpretation of politics and identity in Ovid's epic poem of transformations, "The Metamorphoses". Examining the emphatically fictional character of the poem, this book argues that Ovid uses the problem of fiction in the text to redefine the power of poetry in Augustan Rome.
Trade Review"[Playing Gods] ranges widely over some important aspects of Roman culture and history and offers detailed and penetrating readings of Ovid's text. Most impressively, it allows cultural institutions and poetry to interpret each other reciprocally, often to fruitful effect... [Feldherr] has gone a long way to explaining the potential and relevance of metamorphosis, the theme of classical antiquity's most influential book."--William Fitzgerald, Times Literary Supplement "Feldherr's most influential work to date, this book sheds light on how, in ancient Roman literature, narrative viewpoint constructs and reconstructs power relations in the real world."--Choice "Andrew Feldherr has produced a complex and sophisticated new reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Make no mistake, this is a dense and difficult book to read, but it offers many rewards to the assiduous reader... Close readings throughout the work especially reveal Feldherr's theoretical sophistication, philological expertise, and literary sensitivity."--Sara Myers, New England Classical Journal "Feldherr's nuanced close readings and original insights are entirely persuasive. Like Ovid's carmen perpetuum, while it can be sampled usefully for individual stories, readings or chapters, it is far better read--and re-read--as an interconnected whole. And the story it tells about the politics of Ovidian fiction makes highly rewarding reading."--Genevieve Liveley, Phoenix "While its target audience may, arguably, exclude the non-expert, Playing Gods will be equally interesting and relevant to literary theorists and critics and cultural historians. Feldherr offers an attractive new model for reading politics in a work of fiction, and pushes, considerably further than recent studies of the Metamorphoses, the boundaries of our understanding of the interplay between narrative and exegesis, fiction and reality, and content and form in the reception of Ovid's poem."--Laura Jansen, Journal of Roman Studies
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part One: Fiction and Empire 13 Chapter 1: Metamorphosis and Fiction 15 Io and Syrinx 15 Metamorphosis 26 Beyond Belief 46 Chapter 2: Wavering Identity 60 Imitations of Immortality 63 Reception and Social Identity 83 Upward Mobility? 106 Part Two: Spectacle 123 Chapter 3: Homo Spectator: Sacrifice and the Making of Man 125 Creations 125 Pythagoras 149 Chapter 4: Poets in the Arena 160 Chapter 5: Philomela Again? 199 Part Three: Ovid and the Visual Arts 241 Chapter 6: Faith in Images 243 Pygmalion 257 Domestic Goddesses 276 Chapter 7: "Songs the Greater Image" 293 Reconciling Niobe 295 Perseus: The Shadow 313 Conclusion 342 References 351 Index of Passages Cited 365 General Index 373
