Christina Tsaknaki on Ovid's Metamorphoses

cf. Part II A3 paper on Ovid's Metamorphoses

Already in the first poem from exile, the poet revises his epic poem in order to add his own tragic fortune among its mutata corpora. This begins a long interplay between the poet's magnum opus and his exilic poetry. In this lecture I will focus on some of the ways in which Ovid revisits the Metamorphoses, using many of the mythological characters found therein as points of reference in order to describe his own changed fate. I hope to show that our appreciation of the Metamorphoses can be enhanced by our knowledge of the post-exilic colouring that Ovid gives to many of the stories.