This thesis explores the generic interaction between Virgilian pastoral and Ovidian epic. My primary goal is to bring pastoral, substantially enriched by important critical work thereupon in recent decades, more energetically into the scholarly discussion of the Metamorphoses, whose multifaceted generic interplay is often limited to the study of its interaction with elegy. Secondarily, I hope to show how the Metamorphoses plays a pivotal role in the re-reading of the Eclogues. The fact that both epic and pastoral are written in hexameters facilitates the interaction between the two and enables the Metamorphosesâ repeated short-term transformations into pastoral poetry, which often end abruptly. I will try to show that although the engagement with pastoral occasionally appears to threaten the epic code of the poem, pastoral is ultimately integrated in the Metamorphosesâ generic self-definition as epic and partakes in Ovidâs dynamic recreation of the genre. My primary method is that of intertextuality, resting on the premise that all readings of textual relationships, as the one suggested here, are acts of interpretation. I also explore pastoral in the Metamorphoses intratextually by joining together various pastoral episodes of the Metamorphoses and arguing how similar thematics are replayed and rewritten throughout the poem. The main perspectives from which I examine pastoral in the Ovidian epic are those of fiction and the development of the thematics of the Golden Age. In the first part, I explore instances of song performances in the Metamorphoses, i) musical contests, ii) solo performances and iii) laments, in which I argue that pastoral is extensively at work. I suggest that the Metamorphoses employs pastoralâs overriding generic self-obsession and its tendency to create its own fiction internally, significantly through the means of singing performance and repetition. I argue that the mythopoetic means of pastoral are applied and reworked in the Metamorphoses for the creation of its epic world and heroes. In the second part, I explore the repeated occurrences of the Golden Age theme in the Metamorphoses and suggest that the remarkable engagement with pastoral is employed both to invite a political reading of the Golden Age, as set by Eclogue 4 and its post-Eclogues occurrences, and to recap the introversion of the pastoral enclosure and its seclusion from politics.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:748040 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Ntanou, Eleni |
| Contributors | Morello, Maria-Ruth ; Sharrock, Alison |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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