Gods and Mortals: Vengeance

04/10/14 • 60 min

Epic poetry often features a hostile and punitive god, who forms a barrier to the hero’s journey, but the Metamorphoses takes the theme of vengeful gods to the extreme, as the divinities are paraded as cruel and petty. In addition, when the poem ventures into the world of mortals, tales of grotesque and bloody revenge are frequent. Ovid’s inspiration here is often tragic drama, but this lecture will also look at the connections with contemporary political events, such as Augustus’ unusual move to bring ‘Mars the Avenger’ into the city of Rome itself.

Previous Episode

Ovid Metamorphoses: Gods and Nymphs

On the surface Ovid’s Metamorphoses appears to question traditional gender norms, in particular those held about elite Roman men. Even women are given the opportunity to tell their own stories in the poem. Yet, the Metamorphoses is full of stories about violent rapes that effectively silence the voice of the victim. Moreover, women are often presented in two stereotyped roles: as lovers or mothers. This then raises the question of whether or not gender stereotypes about women are really contested in Ovid’s work, and it would seem that, as is often the case with Roman literature, which was almost always written by men, we then learn more about male views of women than we do about real women. This is not to say that gender is entirely stable in the Metamorphoses but that the work is ultimately concerned with the male gaze.

Next Episode

Changing Nature: Genre in the Metamorphoses

It is often said that Ovid's is a 'Callimachean epic', in other words an episodic and aetiological poem which eschews big scale narratives. As we are now tow thirds of the way through this poem, it is worth considering the degree to which the Metamorphoses 'plays by the rules' of epic poetry. In this lecture we consider the techniques and conventions which place this poem in the epic genre - particularly the scenes of battle or conflict; as well as the literary techniques which mark this poem as a hybrid or parodic epic.