Metamorphoses Passage Analysis

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The passage to be analysed comes from Book 11 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (lines 399-538) (A.Melville, 1986) it is the story of Callisto translated meaning the Moon which is a fitting transition as it starts with the ending of the story of the Sun. Ovid uses the destruction caused by Phaethon after using this fathers chariot and winged horses to prove his paternal parentage.

An important narrative within at least the first two books of the Metamorphoses must be the repetitive and increasingly disturbing nature of the sexual attacks upon Diana’s nymphs. The story of Callisto brings about the forth attack and to date in the book the most deceitful of all.

(Heath, 1991)States:

These narrative conventions build to a momentary yet sundering climax in book three in the tale of Actaeon, in which Diana a careful and understandably suspicious audience of Ovid’s Narrative word of hunt and rape cannot help misinterpretation Actaeon’s actions.

However ; although it can be seen that the tales of Daphne, Syrinx, Io and Callisto are just a graduation leading to Actaeon’s in book three each hold significance especially that of Callisto as it shows not only the growing closeness of the attacks to Diana but also that Jupiter/Jove/Almighty, learning with each attack like any sexual predator

At the start of the story Jove seen healing the earth from the destruction, the merciful almighty (god of gods) almost endearing Jove to the readership. Ovid’s use of scenery does not go amiss (Parry, 1964)suggested ‘ Ovid remains as Herter insists a poet not a painter... a poem always is something more than a transcription from pictorial to literally’

Ovid uses these opening lines to set the scene showing the imagery of mountains...

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... must simply bow to the writers cunning and somewhat existential flair in renewing the myths of old. It is hard to see why it took so many years for the Metamorphoses to become part of mainstream education yet it can also be seen as a work of mythological superiority in the form of poetry covering all genres with its underlying tales of deception, sexual exploits, corruption, rape and the hunt can be transported into modern life.

Works Cited
A.Melville. (1986). Ovid Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Heath, J. (1991). Diana's understanding of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Th classical Journal , 186 (3), 223-243.

Parry, H. (1964). Ovid's Metamorphoses: Violence in pastoral landscapes. Transactions and proceedings of the American Association , 95, 268-282.

Segal, C. (2001). Jupiter in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Arion: Third series , 9 (1), 78=99.

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