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Abstract
Ovid’s depiction of the House of Fama, the goddess of Rumour, in Book XII of the Metamorphoses illustrates a complex relationship between voice, identity and text. This paper will argue that Ovid, through the House of Fama, reveals how the impossibility of maintaining the integrity of corporeality is related to the implausibility of claiming authority over any literary text. Ovid uses the concept of the rumour to inscribe the breakdown of the boundaries of the body and identity, in the context of the breakdown of the unity of the literary text, revealing how the voice we call our own, that is central to our sense of the singularity of the self, is made up of the voices of other people, and how the literary text is understood to be an unstable amalgamation of the voices of other authors.
Abstract
In Tristia 4.7, Ovid describes a series of mythological hybrid creatures. This paper will argue that this catalogue of hybrids alludes to scientific accounts of the primitive creatures that existed in the early stages in the evolution of living beings, as well as literary depictions of monstrous creatures. In particular it will argue that Ovid alludes to his own Metamorphoses, Vergil’s catalogue of insubstantial monsters at A. 6.285-289, Lucretius’ account of primitive creatures at DRN 5.890-894 (a model for both the Metamorphoses and the Vergilian catalogue), and most significantly Empedocles (fr. 60 DK). It will demonstrate that Ovid ‘remythologises’ this passage from Empedocles through the use of multiple allusions to both scientific and mythological discourse, in such a way as to question a series of distinctions, such as that between science and mythology. It will also discuss whether Ovid’s catalogue of hybrids could aid a reinterpretation of the compound creatures described by Empedocles.