poetics of insanity

Question 1

cadmus’ passivity in book 3

Answer 1

linguistic symmetry

‘quid, agenore nate, perumptum / serpentem sectas? et tu spectabere serpens’

visually correlates to Cadmus’ drift from active to passive role - in becoming the serpent he turns from observer to observed, both physically and narratively undergoing a metamorphoses

Question 2

narrated and real violence in book one of the met

Answer 2

story of Syrinx - reed is subject of the tale is transformed - Mercury utilises to lull Argus to sleep in the frame, into the mechanism of his decapitation -

narrated and ‘real’ (or frame narrative) violence are mutually dependent entities and redefine one another - all reed-pipes become associated with this violence, and it cannot be erased

Question 3

narrative gaze and actaeon

Answer 3

actaeon is remade from the unknowing observer of Diana’s bath into the stage

the violence which follows is coloured by his comrade’s remarks - wish he could be there for the spectacle of his viscerally imagined demise - whilst actaeon is in fact present and wishing to be absent - switching POVs

narrative gaze shifts away from his experience but it overshadows

Question 4

narcissus and oedipus

Answer 4

the theban narrative does not necessitate the presence of oedipus in this part of the text (his story is set generations later) but it does perhaps bring him to mind

narcissus and oedipus are both victims of their own vanity - destructive self-obsession

in a sense the narrative insanity is elicited within ourselves - we expect something that should not be expected but we can’t help it

Question 5

narcissus and echo - narrative interruption

Answer 5

metamorphoses could be described in discrete units (obviously complicated by use of frame and meta-narratives but not rendered unuseful as a framework)

narcissus and echo interruption the theban cycle - example of everything being cut short - unrelenting forward motion of time and the narrative: at odds with the stagnation of the water in which Narcissus views himself

everything is living in a continuous state of flux and change and yet time is divided into discrete, atomised units -> issues of episodic continuity - the met at odds with itself

Question 6

prefixes and epithets for echo

Answer 6

linguistic repetition of the prefix ‘re’ in same metrical position at 358-9 (‘reticere’ and ‘resonabilis’) - as a prefix it is inherently engendered in return, redoing, repetition

‘resonabilis’ as an epithet for echo - defining her speech as a repurposed ‘sonabilis’

repetition in the same metrical unit creates a macro-cyclical structure embedded in the better - enclosure

echoes speech is literally less than - deprived of self-awareness through the elimination of her individual voice

complicit in her own degeneration

ovid uses ‘didicit’ and other actives verbs to describe her ‘learning’ to repeat words rather than being forced

Question 7

ovid dissolving the distinction between the mythic and the real in the met

Answer 7

Daphne becomes the laurel which then becomes a component of the triumphal procession

thrusting mythological subject into the present - absorbing the reader into the poetic world and then depositing in the dynamic political present

transgression of apollo is brought into his contemporary parallel - augustus is often associated with apollo

the violence of the laurels origins = the violence of augustus’ triumphs

just as narcissus is drawn to his distorted reflection in the water, the reader is drawn into the poetic reflection of our own insanity and warped self-awareness (knowing the myth and then being taken aback by what ovid does with it)