The metamorphosis of Persephone : Ovid and the self-conscious muse

Although Ovid is currently enjoying a new wave of popularity, most critics withhold from his poetry the close word-by-word readings that are necessary for a thorough understanding of it. Ovid twice treated the myth of Persephone, and Hinds's book is at first a historical inquiry--the most extensive yet done--into the double transformation in Metamorphosis 5 and Fasti 4 of the rape of Persephone, one of the great Graeco-Roman myths. The study continues as a critical exploration of Ovid's self-conscious delight in language and in writing manifested in these twin narratives, providing a feast for students of both Latin poetry and narratives in general. Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Part I. Two Settings For A Rape -- 1. Metamorphoses 5.256-64 : The Heliconian Fount -- 2. Metamorphoses 5.385-91 : The Landscape Of Enna -- Part Ii. Ovid's Two Persephones -- 3. The Homeric Hymn To Demeter : Fasti 4 -- 4. The Homeric Hymn To Demeter : Metamorphoses 5 -- 5. Elegy And Epic : A Traditional Approach -- 6. Elegy And Epic : A New Approach -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index Of Passages Discussed -- Index Of Subjects. Stephen Hinds. Includes Indexes. Bibliography: P. 168-175. Ever since Hesiod's famous encounter at the beginning of the Theogony (most famously remembered by Callimachus in fragment 2 of the Aetia), the introduction into any poem of the Heliconian Muses, patron goddesses of literature itself, has always been a moment for the poet to turn in on himself (or rather, perhaps, to stand outside himself) so as to contemplate more obtrusively than elsewhere the nature of his own craft. Ovid, a poet unashamedly in love in poetry, including his own, has enjoyed a recent renaissance in 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.