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Tragedy in Ovid: Theater, Metatheater, and the Transformation of a Genre
Author(s): Dan Curley (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- Publication Date: August 26, 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 285 pages
- ISBN-10: 1107009537
- ISBN-13: 9781107009530
Book Description
Ovid is today best known for his grand epic, Metamorphoses, and elegiac works like the Ars Amatoria and Heroides. Yet he also wrote a Medea, now unfortunately lost. This play kindled in him a lifelong interest in the genre of tragedy, which informed his later poetry and enabled him to continue his career as a tragedian – if only on the page instead of the stage. This book surveys tragic characters, motifs and modalities in the Heroides and the Metamorphoses. In writing love letters, Ovid’s heroines and heroes display their suffering in an epistolary theater. In telling transformation stories, Ovid offers an exploded view of the traditional theater, although his characters never stray too far from their dramatic origins. Both works constitute an intratextual network of tragic stories that anticipate the theatrical excesses of Seneca and reflect the all-encompassing spirit of Roman imperium.
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
This comprehensive study establishes the importance of an unexpected genre, tragedy, in the career of the most mercurial Western poet.
About the Author
Dan Curley is Associate Professor of Classics at Skidmore College.
