Ovid nomen meum! My name is Ovid!
The Roman Republic was on it's last leg when Ovid, creator of the epic poem Metamorphoses, was born. One year before Ovid's birth, Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate as problems withe the now 500-year-old Roman Republic were coming to a head. An intense struggle for the control of Rome between Julius Caesar's former friend/supporter Mark Antony and Julius Caesar's grandnephew/heir Octavian began, eventually ending with Octavian taking power, becoming Rome's first emperor-- Octavian would rule for almost all of Ovid's life.
Ancient Rome, as most ancient cultures, revolved around oral tradition. ("Hey Ovid, wanna memorize and recite some Homeric epics with me??" "Curabitur ut tortor dude!") Unfortunately, Ovid wasn't as good at oratory as was his older brother. Like most younger siblings who simply choose to explore another skill rather than live in the shadow of their stellar older brother/sister, Ovid developed a love for poetry.....
Ovid joined a circle of poets, working with the best of the best in Rome. He attended poetry readings by Propertius and Macer, reported that the group was enthralled by Horace, and said he even saw Virgil once. He read his own poems in public by the time he was eighteen, and was soon recognized as a rising star.
Metamorphoses is Ovid's best known work, a twelve-thousand-line poem divided into 15 books. This Latin epic draws on Greek Mythology and Roman legend, telling of "transformations" from the creation of the world to the time of Octavian. At the end of his poem, Ovid prophecies that "I shall be the one whom people hear and read. And if poets truly can foretell, in all centuries to come, I shall live." Considering the survival and widespread popularity of his work throughout the ages, Ovid's right!
In reading Metamorphoses (and I'm reading the Michael Simpson translation), it is clear that Ovid is a master storyteller. As much as Metamorphoses is about tracing the changes inherent in everything and everyone, I was really happy to realize that Metamorphoses is really also a lot about story telling. Ovid begins Metamorphoses in a surprisingly casual yet prayerful way as the chief narrator:
"My mind leads me to something new, to tell of forms changed to other bodies. Gods, inspire this poem I've begun (for you've changed it, too), and from the first origin of the world spin my song's fine thread unbroken down to my own time." (Simpson, 9).
So he establishes himself as the narrator from the get-go. But he's not afraid to spread the wealth-- multiple times to throughout the story he yields to other storytellers. Here's an example from Book Seven of Metamorphoses:
[Cephalus' story goes on for four pages, and then finally...]
"'While she could still look at anything at all she looked at me and breathed on me her last unhappy breath, which I caught and then, with a faint smile, she seemed to die content.' There were tears in Cephalus' eyes as he related this, and his listeners were weeping, too." (127).
Ovid will just let his characters take the reigns and tell their own story for pages and pages at a time. Gian Biaggio Conte said of Metamorphoses in Latin Literature: A History that he felt like storytelling "is the most popular activity in the poem"! Not only that, but that Ovid's use of embedding stories like this shows that storytelling is, for Ovid, "a fundamental means of comprehending the world." (Conte, 353) In an oral tradition-dominated culture, of course that would be the primary means of understanding the world!
(I think Bowling for Soup borrowed Ovid's "story within a story" technique in the song "Almost" when the singer talks about writing a song about writing a song about a girl... Or the stage performance of High School Musical which is a high school musical about a high school putting on a musical... Just as we write songs about writing songs and perform plays about performing plays, Ovid tells a story about storytelling!)
Ovid's Metamorphoses clearly demonstrates the importance of oral tradition in the Roman Republic based on the fact that storytelling is such a prominent motif throughout the book. Though this is not historical poetry based on actual people, I think the characters provide us with historical truths about the nature and importance of oral tradition in ancient Rome.
I never knew that Ovid was the one who developed the story within the story concept. It seems that he is was a prodigy. I really liked Alyssa's connection to modern songs and movies.
ReplyDeleteWell i don't think he originated the "embedding" technique but I wanted to highlight the fact that he used it because I think it demonstrates the importance of oral tradition in his time and culture
ReplyDeleteHey this is a great post, That was a really good tie to modern things. It can be really difficult to tie some of these things to us in modern times, but this was really good. Would you consider this to be apart of a system or function of Oral knowledge? I think it is a type of system but I could be completely off, what do you think?
ReplyDeleteI think the content, as well as the form of this particular piece of work is interesting. The story I immediately think of from this work is that of Medea tricking some women into killing and chopping up their own father in an attempt to heal him. Of course if you expand to the rest of the work, there are lots more murders and rapes and other...wonderful things. Whenever I'm feeling particularly depressed about the current state of the world's morals, I look at stories like this and realize that people have been morally corrupt for a long, long time. Somehow it makes me feel better.
ReplyDeleteInteresting random fact: Metamorphosis was the most-read piece of classical literature during the middle ages.
I think stories are a fun function of oral knowledge that can tie together societies like little else. I also think it's interesting that he starts the story with a short note to his religion. It seems like oral knowledge and religion really are tied very closely together.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. I never even realized how there are quite a few instances in which there is a story in a story. I wonder if that's often more effective or more confusing than just a normal story?
ReplyDelete