Ovid's Metamorphoses: Intertextuality and Literary Form

Introduction: Literary History Moving Forward and Backward

"Literary history goes forwards as well as backwards." — Burrow, 273.

While a great deal of novel work since the Metamorphoses incorporates Ovid, Ovid himself drew on the literary styles of others to accomplish a greater goal. The movement of new formalism focuses Ovidian scholars directly on this parallel, noting the master's use of and deviation from standard forms in his poetry. The intertextuality of his works and those from the past affected not only the way his literary style shaped the meaning of his words, but also their course of reception. The Metamorphoses, which moves from the image of the poem as a bookish body to that of the poem as a disembodied song, both utilizes and deviates from these standard literary tools (Joseph Farrell, "The Ovidian Corpus: Poetic Body and Poetic Text," p. 128). Using Hesiod's platform for organizing the cosmos, tragedy for the story of Phaethon, and the epic for Ajax and the Odyssey, Ovid intertwines the verbal tools of the past to create an immediately disjointed but ultimately coherent movement through the history of literary styles and the substance of material text.

Hesiod, Cosmic Violence, and Ovidian Comedy

One of the many attributes that makes the history of Latin literature so powerful is the author's use of literary tools to derive a meaning from words that might otherwise be unavailable. Hesiod mastered this usage of conflicting words and styles, and Ovid reinforces it in his discussion of the cosmos. This is particularly true in his use of horrific material as a source of comedy, which requires the reader to engage with words and context at face value — and, as such, is more demanding of the superficial reader, who must align his reading style with the content of the text.

The Metamorphoses keeps the reader involved on the surface, uninviting any deeper observation of the disasters that may lie below. Its momentary existence is for enjoyment and delight — one that does not demand greater cosmic understanding. Hesiod reveals his interpretation of the nature of the cosmos as vengeful through his rampant use of violence, but while Ovid carries this style, the galvanizing force behind it is starkly different. In Hesiod's work, it is clear that the divine and angry nature of the cosmos is omnipotent; Ovid, by contrast, even questions the divine. His use of violence mirrors Hesiod's in commonplace episodes — the rape of Proserpine, the anger of Medea, the deceit of Ulysses, the anger of Olympus — but the greater context of the violence is not meaning; it is, merely, literary.

Metamorphosis as Incidental: Narrative Links and Transitional Form

While each tale in the poem is meant for superficial literary enjoyment, it is always ripe with metamorphoses. However, Ovid reaffirms the nature of his writing as entertainment by making these metamorphoses somehow incidental, as evidenced in the stories of Pentheus, Heracles, and, most particularly, Phaethon. What is clear throughout his work is that one universal principle maintains the world: while for Hesiod this is a divine power, for Ovid it is the power of the temporary. Troy falls, Rome rises, and nothing is permanent.

The incidental quality of these metamorphoses — their sense of being coincidental or merely side-lined — can be seen in the power of the transitional links Ovid employs. He uses this form of literary style to pull the reader away from deep meaning, which might serve as a crutch, toward a more surprising, accidental, and haphazard form that mirrors the actuality of life: continuously transitional. He achieves this by following the same character through different adventures (Perseus, Hercules) and by placing one story inside another (putting Argus to sleep, Mercury's narrations), so that the character might become an internal narrator. This is also accomplished by "sliding" from a story centered on one character to that of a friend or relative (Epaphus and Phaethon, end of Book 1). These different links, or disjointed continuations, reaffirm the superficiality with which Ovid demands the reader to operate.

Conclusion: Ovid's Subversion of Literary Tradition

Ultimately, Ovid plays on the standard forms of literary device to demand that the reader disengage from expected interpretations of the story. While using the great violence that characterized Hesiod to describe the origin of the cosmos, Ovid forces the reader to acknowledge the ephemeral nature of the universe. The story of Phaethon reminds the reader that not even a story needs to exist without variation, since nothing in life does — a lesson Ovid reaffirms throughout the epic. Lastly, he uses the language of the epic to challenge the reader's acceptance of general stereotypes, including those attributed to both men and literary texts.

Ovid sets himself apart from the other Latin greats by paralleling their functions while, from them, drawing a completely different ending, poem, and reader.