April 17-20, 2020:  “Between Two Worlds
Ovid Shaping Literary Tradition from Virgil to the Post-Classical” (Classical Association Annual Meeting, Swansea University)

Program (.pdf)

Herman Fränkel’s seminal book Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds (1945) sought, against the background of 19th-century classicism and aversion to all things ‘declining’, to situate the maverick late-Augustan as speaking not only to the classical world but also the Christian culture of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. For much of the 20th century, Ovid was perceived, not always positively, as the mediator between so-called Golden and Silver Latin poetry, and as such was used (one might say) to explain, excuse, or excoriate the ‘silveriness’ of post-Augustan poetry. Then came the explosion of interest in Neronian and Flavian literature towards the end of the last century up to the present day, in which, despite massive ongoing interest in Ovid’s poetry itself, the role of the Metamorphoses as a mediator between the Aeneid and later epic was somewhat lost in the face of the sophisticated exploration of Virgilian intertextuality for post-Augustan Latin epic which was the legacy of Philip Hardie’s important book, The Epic Successors of Virgil (1993). Despite a special issue of Arethusa (2002) which sought to re-contextualise for the new millennium the ancient reception of Ovid, the dominance of Virgil in later Latin poetry has continued to occlude the role of Ovid in literary history, especially of the first century after the death of Augustus. The present panel proposes to look again at the diachronic intertextuality of ancient epic, looking both backwards and forwards from Ovid.

Panel Organizer: Alison Sharrock (University of Manchester)

  1. Anke Walker, “Rome's fatum in Ovid's Fasti”
  2. Eleni Ntanou, “Re)shaping Literary Tradition: Pastoral Encounters in Ovid's Metamorphoses”
  3. Alison Sharrock, “reges et proelia: Ovid and war in the Roman epic tradition”
  4. Julene Abad-del Vecchio, “quid Odyssea est? The reception of Ovid's 'Odyssean' themes in post-Augustan literature”
  5. Spohia Papaioannou, “Ovid's artistic rivalries and Nonnus' transformed epic contests"
  6. Catalina Popescu, “The Hue of Beauty: Intentional Ambiguities for Ovid's Andromeda”
  7. Aaron Kachuck, "Per monstra ad astra: Pegasean Poetics from Ovid to Aby Warburg"