This book positions Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a foundational text in the western history of environmental thought. The poem is about new bodies. Stones, springs, plants and animals materialize out of human origins to create a world of hybrid objects, which retain varying degrees of human subjectivity while taking on new physical form. In bending the boundaries of known categories of being, these hybrid entities reveal both the porousness of human and other agencies as well as the dangers released by their fusion. Metamorphosis unsettles the category of the human within the complex ecologies that make up the world as we know it.
Drawing on a range of modern environmental theorists and approaches, the contributors to this volume trace how the Metamorphoses models the relationship between humans and other life forms in ways that resonate with the preoccupations of contemporary eco-criticism. They make the case for seeing the worldview depicted in Ovid’s poem as an exemplar of the ‘premodern’ ecological mindset that contemporary environmental thought seeks to approximate. They also highlight critical moments in the history of the poem’s ecological reception, including reflections by a contemporary poet, as well as studies of Medieval and Renaissance responses to Ovid.
Author(s): Francesca Martelli; Giulia Sissa (editors)
Series: Ancient Environments
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 262
City: London
Cover
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
SERIES PREFACE
INTRODUCTION Francesca Martelli and Giulia Sissa1
Anthropology, animism and metamorphosis
Reading animism
Multispecies ethnography
Science and wisdom traditions
Agriculture and food studies
Hyperobjects and apocalypse
Conclusion
Notes
WHOA!
ANTHROPOLOGY/TRAGEDY/DARK ECOLOGY
CHAPTER 1 CUNCTA FLUUNT: THE FLUIDITY OF LIFE IN OVID’S METAMORPHIC WORLD Giulia Sissa
Cuncta fluunt: why Pythagoras?
Our mouth, our bowels
Human blood
Green peace
Victory on the victim
Bloody sacrifice in the Fasti: war and peace
Notes
CHAPTER 2 OVID’S GAIA: MEDEA, THE MIDDLE AND THE MUDDLE IN THE METAMORPHOSES* Marco Formisano
Notes
CROSS-SPECIES ENCOUNTERS
CHAPTER 3 ANIMAL LISTENING Shane Butler
A nightingale sings
A stroll with Uexküll
A nightingale listens
Notes
CHAPTER 4 MULTISPECIES TEMPORALITIES AND ROMAN FASTI IN OVID’S METAMORPHOSES Francesca Martelli
Halcyon generation(s)
Mourning Memnonides
Conclusion
Notes
CHAPTER 5 ARE TREES REALLY LIKE PEOPLE? Emily Gowers
Notes
SCIENCE/WISDOM TRADITIONS
CHAPTER 6 THE WORLD IN AN EGG: READING MEDIEVAL ECOLOGIES Miranda Griffin
The world of the Ovide moralisé
Manuscripts and the metamorphic zone
A profound ontology
The world, the egg and the soul
Eggs in the environment of the Metamorphoses
Notes
CHAPTER 7 THE TITANIA TRANSLATION: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM AND THE TWO METAMORPHOSES Julia Reinhard Lupton
Shakespeare’s Orphic forest
Bottom translated, Titania descending: a creaturely theophany
Festivals of Isis: a ship and an abortion
Notes
CHAPTER 8 METAMORPHOSIS IN A DEEPER WORLD Claudia Zatta
Ovid’s Metamorphoses: an ontology of the detail
The lifeworld of the Metamorphoses: from creation to exploitation and disclosure
Metamorphoses, motherhood and relational ontologies: From the earth to trees
Notes
AGRICULTURE
CHAPTER 9 LANGUAGE, LIFE AND METAMORPHOSIS IN OVID’S ROMAN BACKSTORY Diana Spencer
Introduction
Case study 1: Biomes (Virgil Georgics, Cicero De Lege Agraria and Lucretius)
Case study 2: Grafting (Varro, De Re Rustica)
Case study 3: Aetiology (Virgil, Eclogue 6 and Catullus 64)
Conclusions
Notes
CHAPTER 10 ‘WHO CAN IMPRESS THE FOREST?’ AGRICULTURE, WARFARE AND THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE IN OVID AND SHAKESPEARE Sandra Fluhrer
I
II
III
IV
Notes
EPILOGUE: A GLOBALLY WARMED METAMORPHOSES John Shoptaw
Note
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
