The Metamorphosis of Persephone

Ovid, a poet unashamedly in love in poetry, including his own, is currently enjoying a new wave of popularity. Yet there is still a certain tendency amongst critics to withhold from his writing the close, word-by-word, engagement which is its due. The primary aim of The Metamorphosis of Persephone i [...]
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Ovid, a poet unashamedly in love in poetry, including his own, is currently enjoying a new wave of popularity. Yet there is still a certain tendency amongst critics to withhold from his writing the close, word-by-word, engagement which is its due. The primary aim of The Metamorphosis of Persephone is to celebrate this poet?s detailed verbal art. Ovid twice treated the myth of Persephone. Dr Hinds? work is a close reading of the account in Metamorphoses 5, and Part I of his book is a detailed consideration of two passages which set the scene for the goddess?s rape. Part II broadens in scope, and by examining the parallel version of the rape in Fasti 4 and the extended cross-references between the two versions, the author produces a study which, as well as enriching our understanding of Ovid, contributes to wider debates on Augustan literary practice and polemic. The book is at once a literary historical enquiry into the double transformation of the rape of Persephone, and a critical exploration of the self-conscious delight in language and in writing manifested in and between these twin Ovidian narratives. This attractively written and subtly nuanced literary study, which offers many quiet challenges to established modes of reading Latin narrative poetry, will be of interest both to scholars of Latin and to students of narrative in other languages.