Repeat Performances: Ovidian Repetition and the Metamorphoses - Hardcover

by Laurel Fulkerson (Editor)

Although repetition is found in all ancient literary genres, it is especially pervasive in epic poetry. Ovid's Metamorphoses exploits this dimension of the epic genre to a great extent; past critics have faulted it as too filled with recycled themes and language. This volume seeks a deeper understanding of Ovidian repetitiveness in the context of new scholarship on intertextuality and intratextuality, examining the purposeful reuse of previous material and the effects produced by a text's repetitive gestures.
A shared vision of the possibilities of Latin epic poetry unites the essays, as does a series of attempts to realize those opportunities. Some of the pieces represent a traditional vein of allusion and intertextuality; others are more innovative in their approaches. Each, in a sense, stands as a placeholder for a methodology of theorizing the repetitive practices of poetry, of epic, and of Ovid in particular.

Author Biography

Laurel Fulkerson is a professor of classics and an associate dean at Florida State University. She is the author of The Ovidian Author as Heroine and No Regrets: Remorse in Classical Antiquity. Tim Stover is an associate professor of classics at Florida State University and the author of Epic and Empire in Vespasianic Rome.