The Image of the Poet in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Barbara Pavlock unmasks major figures in Ovidrs"sMetamorphosesas surrogates for his narrative persona, highlighting the conflicted revisionist nature of theMetamorphoses. Although Ovid ostensibly validates traditional customs and institutions, instability is in fact a defining feature of both the core epic values and his own poetics. The Image of the Poetexplores issues central to Ovidrs"s poetics-the status of the image, the generation of plots, repetition, opposition between refined and inflated epic style, the reliability of the narrative voice, and the interrelation of rhetoric and poetry. The work explores the constructed author and complements recent criticism focusing on the reader in the text.

Barbara Pavlock is associate professor of classics at Lehigh University and author of Eros, Imitation, and the Epic Tradition.