Playing Gods (ebook)

Argumento de Playing Gods (ebook)

"While its target audience may, arguably, exclude the non-expert, Playing Gods will be equally interesting and relevant to literary theorists and critics and cultural historians. Feldherr offers an attractive new model for reading politics in a work of fiction, and pushes, considerably further than recent studies of the Metamorphoses, the boundaries of our understanding of the interplay between narrative and exegesis, fiction and reality, and content and form in the reception of Ovid's poem."--Laura Jansen, Journal of Roman Studies

"Andrew Feldherr has produced a complex and sophisticated new reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Make no mistake, this is a dense and difficult book to read, but it offers many rewards to the assiduous reader. . . . Close readings throughout the work especially reveal Feldherr's theoretical sophistication, philological expertise, and literary sensitivity."--Sara Myers, New England Classical Journal

"This is a major study of a major poet, a book that will have to be taken very seriously by all students of Ovid and Augustan literature. It also has much to offer anyone who is interested in the cultural politics of other places and other times. Andrew Feldherr shows familiar passages in new, often startlingly new, lights."--Philip Hardie, Trinity College, University of Cambridge

"This fascinating book is a major achievement. Insightful and often brilliant, it sets a new standard for sustained close reading of Ovid. Andrew Feldherr brings the discussion of the politics of Ovidian metamorphosis to a new level of critical sophistication. What he has to say about the nature of poetic fiction, the ethics of representation and interpretation, and the complex interrelationship of poetics and politics is bound to stimulate, provoke, and in most cases convince."--Joy Connolly, New York University

"Feldherr's nuanced close readings and original insights are entirely persuasive. Like Ovid's carmen perpetuum, while it can be sampled usefully for individual stories, readings or chapters, it is far better read--and re-read--as an interconnected whole. And the story it tells about the politics of Ovidian fiction makes highly rewarding reading."--Genevieve Liveley, Phoenix

"Feldherr's most influential work to date, this book sheds light on how, in ancient Roman literature, narrative viewpoint constructs and reconstructs power relations in the real world."--Choice

"[Playing Gods] ranges widely over some important aspects of Roman culture and history and offers detailed and penetrating readings of Ovid's text. Most impressively, it allows cultural institutions and poetry to interpret each other reciprocally, often to fruitful effect. . . . [Feldherr] has gone a long way to explaining the potential and relevance of metamorphosis, the theme of classical antiquity's most influential book."--William Fitzgerald, Times Literary Supplement0Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1

Part One: Fiction and Empire 13
Chapter 1: Metamorphosis and Fiction 15
Io and Syrinx 15
Metamorphosis 26
Beyond Belief 46
Chapter 2: Wavering Identity 60
Imitations of Immortality 63
Reception and Social Identity 83
Upward Mobility? 106

Part Two: Spectacle 123
Chapter 3: Homo Spectator: Sacrifice and the Making of Man 125
Creations 125
Pythagoras 149
Chapter 4: Poets in the Arena 160
Chapter 5: Philomela Again? 199

Part Three: Ovid and the Visual Arts 241
Chapter 6: Faith in Images 243
Pygmalion 257
Domestic Goddesses 276
Chapter 7: "Songs the Greater Image" 293
Reconciling Niobe 295
Perseus: The Shadow 313
Conclusion 342
References 351
Index of Passages Cited 365
General Index 373