Power Play in Latin Love Elegy and its Multiple Forms of Continuity in Ovid's >Metamorphoses<

José Manuel Blanco Mayor

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783110486612
• eBook ISBN: 9783110488654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Conceived as a necessary reconsideration of the pristine "elegiac question" in Ovid's Metamorphoses, this book intends to offer an analysis of the function of elegiac discourse within Ovid's magnum opus from the perspective of metapoetics.

To that end, the author undertakes, in the first section, a close re-reading of some relevant passages of Latin love elegy. From a prism that takes into account the characteristically elegiac multivocality, the genre reveals itself as an agonistic discourse in which the poet dramatises his metaliterary power-relation with the puella, who is unveiled as the synthesis of the distinct sub-products of his poetic activity.

Thereupon, the author proceeds to scrutinise how elegiac elements are assimilated and transformed as they become integrated within the framework of Ovid's poem of changing forms. Far from being a mere stylistic ornament, the presence of an elegiac register in many erotic passages tells us about Ovid's stance towards love as a metapoetic trope. By reworking elegiac tradition to the point of transforming it into a novum corpus, the poet ultimately substantiates the mutability of generic categories.

Section II.New perspectives in the study of “the elegiac” in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

1Introduction

“Yo creía que quería ser poeta, pero en el fondo quería ser poema”,

Jaime Gil de Biedma305

When Ovid decided to incorporate elegy into the poetic universe of the Metamorphoses he not only included the most superficial and recognisable topoi, but he also brought in the metapoetic background of the genre. It is not coincidental that elegy (in the manifold ways Ovid presents it) enjoys so a prominent presence in the Metamorphoses, if we take into account how pervasively not only the theme of love but also reflection on metaliterary authority appear in the work. Throughout the previous chapters I have tried to demonstrate that, alongside the most obvious erotic content of elegy, the expression of a metaliterary agon between the artist and his oeuvre is one of the main features of the genre. Elegiac discourse manifests a highly sophisticated degree of literary self-consciousness, in so far as it displays a pervasive concern with the artist’s anxious fear of being dispossessed by the creature that he himself engendered. Adopting a characteristically Derridaean formulation306, we can say that the elegist as author is systematically worried by the fact that, once he has given life to his oeuvre, it becomes independent and threatens to rise up against him. The elusive nature of the puella reflects the elusive nature of the literary oeuvre: it seems to elude its filiation and, by the same token, to reject the cause of its very existence. Precisely this threat of dispossession impels the artist to assert himself authorially and to represent his ontological priority over his oeuvre as a pivotal point of his discourse. The elegiac agon is the dramatisation of the poet’s struggle to be recognised as, so to speak, the “paternal” force that subjugates his literary work’s quest for independence and permanence. The elegiac genre stages the poet’s struggle to coerce these impulses: even though it is the oeuvre that ultimately lives on, the poet anxiously aims to brand it with the seal of his paternity and, thereby, to place himself at the head of the whole process.

But, what happens when these seismic forces that underlie elegy are transferred to a different literary context –a context that is located in the timelessness of myth and is governed by the fluctuation of change? To what degree are the “elegiac characters” of the Metamorphoses functionally equivalent to the puella and the amator of elegy? Although the characteristically hybrid nature of any element from the world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses prevents analysis in terms of taxonomical categorisation, it is, nevertheless, possible to establish a bipartite division regarding how elegy is incorporated within Ovid’s magnum opus. In the first pattern (which will be treated in this chapter), Ovid ascribes elegiac traits to characters who participate in erotic narratives where there is an explicit power asymmetry between the lovers. In these episodes, of which Apollo and Daphne is the most illustrative example, the stakes usually include sexual violence. In the second pattern, by contrast, Ovid assigns elegiac characteristics to figures who are involved in tales of mutual love. The episode of Ceyx and Alcyone, in this regard, is an enlightening sample. The aim of this section is to examine Ovid’s intertextual dialogue with the elegiac genre and to analyse the manners in which he clarifies (Section II, Chapter 2) or alters (Section II, Chapter 3) the hierarchical paradigm of elegy.

In spite of the apparent rigidity of the proposed scheme, it is not my aim to atomise a poem that programmatically is defined as a carmen perpetuum307. Therefore, as far as possible, a coherent line of evolution will be traced, not only within each of the patterns to be analysed, but also within the poem as a whole. Nevertheless, my reading of the Metamorphoses does not aspire to be an exhaustive account of all the passages that show elegiac influences, given how many parts of the poem are permeated by elegiac tones. For the sake of clarity and synthesis, I will select episodes that are particularly enlightening for examining Ovid’s intertextual play with the conventions of elegy.

2Asymmetrical love in the Metamorphoses

Ovid’s decided interest in the representation of sexual violence in the Metamorphoses is recognizable even at first sight, if we take into account the many passages where the characters in erotic narratives adopt the roles of the sexual aggressor and the helpless victim. The aim of this chapter is to examine some of the most pertinent passages of this type and to explain why these episodes are endowed with elegiac traits. Many studies, from different hermeneutical points of view (though particularly from the perspective of gender studies) have called attention to this fact308, and, indeed, the label “Apollo-and-Daphne-pattern” has become a frequent means of referring to sexually violent episodes in the Metamorphoses309–even though there are surely many other stories in the poem where sexual violence is much more explicit310. This narrative pattern pervades the poem, although it is particularly prevalent in its first six books311. Criticism has already adequately outlined the common traits of the “Daphne-type” episodes312 and has underscored, in particular, the asymmetry of the erotic relations, given that the main characters in most of these stories are a god, who plays the role of the active amator, and a mortal woman or a nymph, who is the passive beloved.

These critical efforts improve our understanding of the episodes of sexual violence, in so far as they specifically highlight the importance of hierarchical categories within the Metamorphoses, especially in the episodes of divine love. Although most of these studies acknowledge the elegiac background of the “Daphne-type” episodes, it is nevertheless necessary to combine the analysis of the power relations in these narratives with the representation of power relations in the elegiac genre itself.

Unfortunately studies examining power relations within Ovid’s magnum opus do not systematically consider the parallel analysis of power relations within elegy313. As a result, the intricate net of intertextual allusions conceptually linking the Metamorphoses and elegy has not been scrutinised comprehensively from the perspective of power relations. A complex range of hermeneutical assumptions may have contributed to this exegetical gap. Not least, one factor has been decisive: as the epistemological heir of stylistics314, criticism on allusion and intertextuality too often renders an image of closed immanence and conveys the impression of operating in a discourse that ignores the historicity of the text. Thus, all too often, the critic’s task seems to be the “decryption” of a text’s aesthetic mechanics en route to articulating the true intention of the author. The apodictic nature of this exegetical model315 has likely contributed to a critical landscape where, for the Metamorphoses, the examination of power relations (which has mainly been taken up by gender studies) seems to be at odds with the systematic analysis of Ovid’s intertextual dialogue with the elegiac genre. Perhaps another reason why gender-oriented studies on power relations have tended to distance themselves from the analysis of “elegiac traits” is a (mis)understanding of this task as one in the domain of the old-fashioned Quellenforschung.

However, leaving aside fruitless controversies on terminology (as a matter of fact, intertextuality is a study of sources from a functional perspective316), the semantic relation between the hierarchical dynamics of the elegiac episodes in the Metamorphoses and the hierarchical dynamics of elegy itself demands an exegetical attention that crucially requires the support of methodological eclecticism317.

Regarding the power dynamics of eroticism in the elegiac genre, the conclusions drawn in Section I of the present work allow us to reframe the “elegiac question” of the Metamorphoses from a new perspective. Moreover, these very conclusions suggest the need to unify the hermeneutical strands of those studies that focus on power relations in the Metamorphoses and those studies that examine (following thematic and stylistic criteria of intertextual allusion) the elegiac elements in the episodes of the “Apollo-and-Daphne-type”.

As we have seen in the previous pages, one of the key themes of love elegy is the reflection on power. Within the agonistic discourse of elegy, the poeta-amator performs a veiled but systematic struggle with the realities deriving from his poetic craftsmanship, which are synthesised under the persona of the elegia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Introduction
• Section I. Et amando et amare fatendo: Fiction and suprafiction in Latin love elegy. Agon and power relations as poetological expressions
• Section II. New perspectives in the study of “the elegiac” in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index of Passages Cited
• Index of Names and Subjects