Simile and Identity in Ovid's Metamorphoses

The first monograph on Ovid's epic simile, offering fresh perspectives on central episodes of this important work.

Marie Louise von Glinski (Author)

9780521760966, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 February 2012

180 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.3 cm, 0.43 kg

'[This book] is accessible to readers at all levels of expertise, including undergraduates, and would also make ideal reading for all people who like fiction and literary experiments.' Alessandro Barchiesi, Classical World

Nulli sua forma manebat. The world of Ovid's Metamorphoses is marked by constant flux in which nothing keeps its original form. This book argues that Ovid uses the epic simile to capture states of unresolved identity - in the transition between human, animal and divine identity, as well as in the poem's textual ambivalence between genres and the negotiation of fiction and reality. In conjuring up a likeness, the mental image of the simile enters a dialectic of appearances in a visually complex and treacherous universe. Original and subtle close readings of episodes in the poem, from Narcissus to Adonis, from Diana's blush to the freeform dreams in the House of Sleep, trace the simile's potential for exploiting indeterminacy and immateriality. In its protean permutations the simile touches on the most profound issues of the poem - the nature of humanity and divinity and the essence of poetic creation.

Introduction
1. Metamorphosis and simile
2. The gods and the simile
3. The simile and genre
4. Simile and fictionality
Conclusion: the protean nature of simile.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]