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Literature and History

Episode 63: All Is in Flux (Ovid's Metamorphoses, Books 11-15)

Literature and History

Doug Metzger

Literature, Books, History, Classics, Arts

4.91.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2019

⏱️ 131 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books 11-15. The vast Metamorphoses draws to a resonant conclusion as Ovid brings his great poem to Rome itself.

Episode 63 Quiz:
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Episode 63 Transcription:
http://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-063-all-is-in-flux

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Literature and history

0:10.0

come.

0:12.0

Hello and welcome to literature and history.

0:15.0

Episode 63, all is in flux.

0:20.0

This is the third of three programs on the metamorphosis, a long poem that the Roman writer

0:26.6

Ovid completed around 8 CE.

0:30.1

If you want to hear the metamorphosis from the beginning, the story starts in episode 61.

0:35.8

In this episode, we will cover the five final books of Ovid's most famous work, books in which

0:41.0

Ovid increasingly turns to the subject of Rome and the contemporary history around him.

0:46.0

As we move into the final third of the metamorphoses,

0:50.0

I think one thing we need to remember is that even in the closing books of his collection,

0:54.8

Ovid never slows down. Book 14, for instance, contains 16 embedded tales with references

1:01.9

to other stories to boot.

1:04.0

As the action in the poem moves closer and closer to Rome and the poem's conclusion,

1:09.0

often begins to season his collection with native Italian stories.

1:13.8

But he never really stops island hopping around the Mediterranean, peopleing his stories with

1:18.4

a hodgepodge of Greeks, Romans, and others.

1:22.9

in the 15th and final book of the epic often gives us something like a conclusion, a syncretic

1:28.9

philosophical speech made by a fictional version of the philosopher Pythagoras, and then an assurance that with

1:35.3

the ascension of Augustus at least something permanent has been installed amidst the

1:40.4

unending flux of the universe.

1:43.1

But Ovid remains a crafty impresario up until the end,

...

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