{"product_id":"playing-gods-ovids-metamorphoses-and-the-politics-of-fiction-9780691138145","title":"Playing Gods  Ovids Metamorphoses and the","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOffers 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[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\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments 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","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403762540887,"sku":"9780691138145","price":52.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/playing-gods-ovids-metamorphoses-and-the-politics-of-fiction-9780691138145","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}