Description
Book SynopsisIn these reflections on the mercurial qualities of style in Ovid's Meta-morphoses, Garth Tissol contends that stylistic features of the ever-shifting narrative surface, such as wordplay, narrative disruption, and the self-conscious reworking of the poetic tradition, are thematically significant. It is the style that makes the process of reading the
Trade Review"Tissol's book offers ample evidence of the poem's perennial appeal... His generally effective English versions of his Greek and Latin sources enrich and broaden the book, thus extending its functional importance well beyond the classics seminar."-- Choice
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction3Ch. 1Glittering Trifles: Verbal Wit and Physical Transformation11Transgressive Language: Narcissus and Althea11Indecorous and Transformative Puns22Misunderstanding aura: Cephalus, Procris, and the Pun26Divinatory Wordplay: The Pun Overheard30Vox non intellecta: Irony and Metamorphic Wordplay (Myrrha)36Littera scripta manet - Or Does It? (Byblis)42Self-Cancelling and Self-Objectifying Witticisms52Wordplay, Personification, and Phantasia61True Imitation: Ceyx, Alcyone, and Morpheus72The House of Reception85Ch. 2The Ass's Shadow: Narrative Disruption and Its Consequences89Some Exemplary Interruptions89Daedalus and Perdix97Cyclopean Violence and Narrative Disruption105Some Scandalous Passages124Ch. 3Disruptive Traditions131Indecorous Possibilities: Callimachus's Hymn to Artemis and Ovidian Style131Elegiac Contributions: Propertius's Tarpeia and Ovid's Scylla143Epic Distortions: The Hecale in the Metamorphoses153Ch. 4Deeper Causes: Aetiology and Style167Aetiological Wordplay167Ovid's Little Aeneid177Aetiology and the Nature of Flux191Conclusion215App. AG. J. Vossius on Syllepsis oratoria217App. BSyllepsis and Zeugma219App. CFurther Examples of Syllepsis in Ovid221References223Index locorum231Index235
