A discourse of wonders: audience and performance in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Stephen M. Wheeler

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 - Literary Criticism - 272 pages

In A Discourse of Wonders, Stephen M. Wheeler introduces a fresh perspective for readers of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Drawing on Ovidian scholarship and twentieth-century literary theory, he argues that the poem is not an anthology or collection but a single continuous performance. Wheeler's thorough, detailed analysis of how Ovid constructs, cultivates, and transforms his audience challenges the assumption that Ovid's narrative persona addresses the reader. Wheeler proposes instead that Ovid represents himself in the poem as an epic storyteller moved to tell a universal history of metamorphosis in the presence of a fictional audience. The longstanding critical interest in Ovid's poetics, Wheeler maintains, has tended to obscure the role of the audience in reading and interpreting the Metamorphoses.

A Discourse of Wonders offers an imaginative and accessible revaluation of one of the greatest surviving works of classical poetry, one whose enduring influence can be found in literature, art, music, and the performing arts from the Middle Ages to the present.

Contents

• The Fiction of VivaVoce Performance: 34
• The Divided Audience: 66
• Assembling an Audience: 94
• Discourse and Time: 117
• Directions to the Audience: 140
• The Danger of Disbelief: 162
• Translating Past into Present: 194
• Appendix A Internal Narrators and Audiences in: 207
• References: 241
• Acknowledgments: 259

About the author

Stephen M. Wheeler teaches classics and ancient Mediterranean studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A discourse of wonders: audience and performance in Ovid's Metamorphoses
• Author: Stephen M. Wheeler
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999
• ISBN: 0812234758, 9780812234756
• Length: 272 pages
• Subjects: History / Ancient / Rome; Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical; Literary Criticism / Poetry