Ovid's Metamorphoses

Change is inevitable in life, whether it’s for good or bad. Ovid makes us reflect about something as basic as change, which can alter dramatically our lives, as we know them. According to Lively’s context for Ovid, Ovid in each of his literary career effectively transformed the world of elegy, playfully modeling each and every character along with its personality. He began a new approach of work in which he would change characters into new shapes, a feature of his approach to poetry that would reappear in his most important piece of work, Metamorphoses (3). Ovid’s works of art are all written in Latin, making their translation hard to comprehend when trying to understand the meaning of his stories. Most of the motifs in Ovid’s metamorphoses are juxtapositions such as good and bad, and caring and selfish. Throughout the entire piece of work, we are able to see how Ovid pokes fun at love affairs of gods, enjoyment of personal pleasure and transitory nature of life which leads into the beginning of the story; the creation. Ovid characterizes gods as foolish creatures that are as immoral as they are irrational; gods who have no credit for anything in particular; but for their own unwitty arrangements.

Ovid’s artwork is very intriguing for various reasons; one of them being that he calls on gods for inspiration rather than muses. By calling on the entire god’s at the same time, he doesn’t leave much room for credit to any particular one. Lively states that “it is the gods, who are given the credit or perhaps the blame, for inspiring Ovid… The gods are directly responsible for inflicting numerous metamorphoses upon their mortal victims… occasionally as a punishment, but most often through anger, jealousy or lust” (10). Also, since O...

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...al of Ovid, to make your poem continue to live in eternity.

Works Cited

Johnson J., Patricia. Ovid before Exile [electronic Resource]: Art and Punishment in the Metamorphoses. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin, 2008. Print. Wisconsin Studies in Classics.

Feldherr, Andrew. Playing Gods [Electronic Resource] : Ovid's Metamorphoses And The Politics Of Fiction / Andrew Feldherr. n.p.: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2010., 2010. Mercyhurst University's Catalog. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.

Liveley, Genevieve. Ovid's Metamorphoses [Electronic Resource] : A Reader's Guide / Genevieve Liveley. n.p.: New York : Continuum, 2011., 2011. Mercyhurst University's Catalog. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.

Kline, Anthony. "The Ovid Collection--A. S. Kline, Ovid's Metamorphoses." The Ovid Collection--A. S. Kline, Ovid's Metamorphoses. N.p., 2000. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.