Ovid's Metamorphoses

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course, we translate and discuss selected passages from the Metamorphoses, Ovid's idiosyncratic poetic history of the world. Topics for our discussions include the spiritual, moral, religious, political, and physical transformations portrayed between the creation story at the beginning and the deification of Caesar at the end of the text; the tension between Ovid's adherence to Roman traditions and his irreverent, sometimes subversive, artistic originality; the poem's narrative techniques, poetic style, and structure; the significance of intertextual allusions to Greek drama, Virgilian epic, and Ovid's own love poetry; the instability of gender; portraits of the poet within the work; and the innumerable faces of love, as presented through characters who are pious, raging with passion, inseperable, violent, infatuated, lovesick, devoted, and much more. Above all, this course aims at clarifying how Ovid's inexhaustible playfulness and delightful wit contributed to shaping a work of both epic grandeur and lyric intimacy that continues to inspire poets, composers, novelists, painters, and at least one playwright whose version recently made it all the way to Broadway. Daily preparation and active participation in class are essential components of the course; brief written assignments, one mid-term exam, one brief project, and a final exam also count towards the final grade. Recommended for students who have completed CLLA 20003 or equivalent.