Further Exploration

Roman Myth

If there's one book I would highly recommend checking out after this class, it is Peter Wiseman's Myths of Rome. (Ideally, through a library or in a used copy— it's not a cheap book right now.) Lavishly illustrated and with much to offer both general and scholarly audiences, it is a fascinating read that will provide much fodder for any area you may be interested in. review here

More Roman Poetry

If you'd like to read more Roman poetry, then you can of course start with some more Ovid: 1. The Heroides are probably the most interesting for the myth-minded. An old translation is here and there are many modern translations. 2. Amores: Nothing wrong with a bit of love poetry. 3. The Fasti: old translation online here but this one is very much worth reading with some aids, e.g. in the Oxford World's Classics series

If you'd prefer a break from Ovid, then the options are vast. 1. Propertius: Ovid's near contemporary in elegy, for those who are curious about the genre. There are decent translations in most major publisher series. 2. Vergil (aka Virgil), Aeneid: A work vastly different in tone and in a nature, the bedrock (for those who won't accept my claim that Ovid is the greatest poet ever) of Roman literature. I am partial to Fagles' translation, but there are good translations by many others. 3. Seneca, Tragedies: If you want more myth in a Roman package, then you will find these of interest. Sometimes gruesome but always entertaining, Seneca's works may have been composed primarily for small recitation rather than performance. Emily Wilson has a translation of Seneca, as does the always inventive (if not “literal”) David Slavitt in his Complete Roman drama series.

Ancient Roman culture, history, etc.

If you've had enough poetry for now, then that's fine too. There's always more to find out about the Roman empire and the like. Among good starting points here are entries in the Oxford Very Short Introductions Series, any of the Routledge Ancient History Series, and, for everything in one package, Mary Beard's SPQR. Incidentally, for more on Mary Beard, see, among many things this and of course her column.

For all things classical

There are many places to go to get a classical fix these days. One of the more comprehensive listings (and up to date news feeds) for such things is Rogue Classicism. Links to blogs, podcasts, and all manner of things are there. Of particular interest may be the page on Classical Podcastery.

Another place to look is Classics for All.

Finally, I highly recommend finding out about anything classical by simply doing a search of BMCR: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/

Modern retellings

You can of course re-read Ovid, but you may also be interested in others' rereadings.

Wake, Siren is a retelling of Ovid from the point of view of its women. See also here. For more on the recent confronting of Ovid's rape scenes, see, among many other items, this, this, or this.

From recent classes

There are many links and paths available in the slides. In addition, a few last items:

Wally Reinhardt, mentioned today, has devoted all his artistic work since the 1980s to Ovid's Metamorphoses: https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu/exhibition/wally-reinhardt-pages-ovids-metamorphosesjanuary-9-april-6-2019/

Ovid's engagement with Virgil is more or less bread and butter for Latin scholars. For Ovid and Homer, Barbara Boyd's book is a recent approach

In closing

A mashup of Economics and Ovid through Britten's musical Metamorphoses (Narcissus). Why? How? Is this Ovidian?

P.S.

can anyone explain to me why ovid.com is a trademarked medical research platform?

This is an archived and unmaintained version of the course page for the continuing education class on Greek myth. Formatting is no longer preserved and not all links work.

Then again, some links do.

ajr / 2020-11-02

Schedule Meetings Slides How-To Offline Activities Annotated Bibliography

OLLI Greek Myth ===============

Maymester 2020 Online: Greek myth in three weeks

Allen J. Romano

What's new: 2020-05-25 — added Week 3 video and slides and further exploration and links for week 3 (pdf)

2020-05-18 — added Week 2 video and slides and further exploration and links for week 2 (pdf)

2020-05-17 — added Myths in Tallahassee offline activity. Feel free to explore and suggest additions.

2020-05-12 — added slides with lecture audio and further reading for week 1; video recording in pcloud drive (link in the email)

THIS WEBSITE contains course materials for Greek myth taught online for OLLI in Maymester 2020. In addition to the syllabus, suggested readings and materials for further exploration (always optional of course), you will find as well a livefeed for our real-time meeting each week (in case you get booted out of the online chat, have any bandwith issues, or want to watch without using zoom), and a series of materials for your offline enjoyment and engagement (entirely optional) created uniquely for this course.

Schedule ========

EXAMS: never!

HOMEWORK: due... never!

SCHEDULE: ok, we need some structure... The main event meets every Monday, in real time, at 10 AM online. But I've also added some material to explore as much as you like at your leisure. And I'll make myself available online for a virtual coffee hour each week online as well.

Scheduled Sessions

Mondays, 10AM

Week 1 ======

The Geography of Myths and Legends

Monday May 11, 10AM-noon

We will start with the question of how ancient myths and legends were localized in time and space, the differences between local and “panhellenic” myths, and how the myths and legends of Ancient Greece come down to us today.

Week 2 ======

Heroes of Greek Legend

Monday, May 18, 10AM-noon

This week we look at heroes, their literary representations and their cults. Heracles is the star this week.

Week 3 ======

Gods of Myth

Monday May 25, 10AM-noon

In this last session we turn to the gods. While we will spend plenty of time on the Olympians, we will also explore the wide variety of Greek stories about the gods.

Outside of Class

Explore on your own time, as you like

This is the asynchronous part of the class. Here, each week, you'll find a map or timeline or something interactive embedded online. You can explore as you like and then do any of the following:

1. Bring the material into discussion each week
2. Record your own version of a story from something you've read in the bibliography below. Send it to me. I'll add it to the interactive visualization above at the appropriate place. For instructions on how to do this, see the How-to. It can be done on a phone or tablet.
3. Do nothing and enjoy the rest of your day — It's OLLI. NO requirements or assignments, remember!

Q&A and informal coffee hour

Thursdays @3, online

While we will of course get a chance to speak during class, one of the ways that an online course in real time cannot compare to a class face to face is in the way that audiences and speakers handle questions. For our Monday sessions, most of this will have to take place in the text chat. But OLLI is about connection, and so I wanted to make sure there was a chance, if anyone wanted to ask questions or just follow-up on some thoughts from class, to do a bit of Q&A in a smaller and informal, “after-class” kind of environment. So, to that end, I'll be hanging out online and you can come join me both immediately after the class on Monday and then for online coffee hour on Thursdays at 3. So it will be the same online link, just with far fewer people. And I will be drinking coffee and or having a snack. If no one is there, not a big deal, but I wanted to make myself available.

i

Presentations =============

Slides and Audio

You can find all the slides for the class sessions at https://slides.com/didaskalos/decks/olli-greek-myth

Week 1

Slides and audio:

Week 2

Slides:

Video:

Week 3: The Gods

Video:

Slides:

How-To ======

Quick how-to for getting online and anything related to the course

How to fire up zoom from Allen Romano on Vimeo.

Further Readings and Resources ==============================

Retellings, Originals, Studies, Performances, &c

If there is one book you read with this course, then I highly recommend Richard Martin's Myths of the Ancient Greeks. It is a compendium, similar and inspired by Edith Hamilton's work, but incorporating current research and thinking about ancient myth into a readable and enjoyable form. Lots of myths in a small space. (Available as an ebook.) Book

If you are interested in reading the original sources and looking at original artwork, then you can get quite a lot from the Perseus project. You will find translations of the canon of Greek (and Latin) literature plus a wide variety of images. SITE

Each week with the materials for the week below I will post more specific items, links of interest, things that you all send me for general consumption by the class. For a more general set of things, check out the Semi-Annotated Bibliography (pdf)

Week 1 further exploration and links (pdf)

Week 2 further exploration and links: heroes, Heracles et al. (pdf)

Week 3 further exploration: podcasts, documentaries, movies (pdf)

Extras ======

For your exploration each week, some fun things to explore before, between, and in the midst of class

Myth in Tallahassee

As one way to play with the Greek myths, the storymap below has brief clips connecting locales around Tallahassee to the ancient myths. You'll find some things we discuss this weeks, many things we won't have time for, and a story of sorts about what it means to say that myths and legends take place in particular places. As you'll see, anywhere can be a site for retelling a myth and anything can be cause to recall an ancient story. I've added some to get going. If there are stories you want to hear more about, then drop me a line and I'll add them. If there's a story you'd like to tell and a connection you'd like to make, then grab your phone or device, just record the audio and I'll set it up as part of our tour.

Live Feed =========

If we're online right now and broadcasting, then it will show up here.

multiple ways to stream

For those who have trouble with zoom, here's an alternate feed for the livestream. It is just youtube, so it should be widely accessible.

© 2020 Allen J. Romano, All Rights Reserved

This site built with Tachyons css, plain old html, and vim

Scholarly Words on Paper

For those who recognize, as Callimachus did, that “a big book is a great evil”, Oxford's Very Short Introductions series is invaluable: https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/9780198837688.001.0001/actrade-9780198837688

Geared at a general audience but with expert and up-to-date scholarly knowledge, things like the Cambridge Companion to Ovid

For understanding Roman literature in his context, I highly recommend Elaine Fantham's Roman Literary Culture. She makes Roman literature understandable and approachable, in strokes both broad and detailed.

Conte's Latin Literature: A History is a standard handbook which provides a useful summary of both Ovid and his life.

If you have access to a university library (because otherwise you should certainly not pay Brill's ridiculous prices and because it is probably online through the library), something like Brill's Companion to Ovid is chock full of Ovidian goodness: https://brill.com/view/title/7460?language=en

Also usually available with online university library access, A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid published by Wiley has great material in it to help navigate the complicated (and incredibly rich) world of Ovidian reception studies.

Some additional recommendations from the Oxford Bibliographies entry on Ovid's Metamorphoses:

Barkan, L. 1986. The gods made flesh: Metamorphosis and the pursuit of paganism. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press. A magisterial study on the history of metamorphosis from classical antiquity through the Renaissance, with generous treatment of Ovid, Dante, and Shakespeare.

Brown, S. A. 2005. Ovid: Myth and Metamorphosis. Ancients in Action. London: Bristol Classical. A vivid primer to the epic, with detailed treatment of the stories of Apollo and Daphne, Actaeon, Philomela, Arachne, and Pygmalion.

Due, O. S. 1974. Changing forms: Studies in the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. A sensible introduction to the epic, of enduring value in particular for its material on Ovid’s debts to Homer, Callimachus, Lucretius, and Horace.

Fantham, E. 2004. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. A sober, thematically organized introduction to the poem, with study both of Ovid’s antecedents and the reception of the epic.

Fratantuono, L. 2011. Madness transformed: A reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. A detailed running commentary on the entire epic, with one chapter devoted to each book of the poem.

Lively, G. 2010. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: A Reader’s Guide. London and New York: Continuum. A concise overview of the epic, with useful treatments of both the work and its afterlife.

Ovid's Metamorphoses after antiquity

The history of Ovid's influence (or reception) is extensive. So too are the studies. A Handbook of Reception of Ovid, mentioned above, is a good place to start.

Brown, S. A. 1999. The Metamorphosis of Ovid: From Chaucer to Ted Hughes and Martindale, C., ed. 1990. Ovid renewed: Ovidian influences on literature and art from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century are also useful for tracing the big history of Ovidian reception.

For the past century, check out Ziolkowski's Ovid and the Moderns.

A recent collection inspired by Ovid is After Ovid, including work by Ted Hughes, Jorie Graham, Seamus Heaney, and many others.

Ovid Illustrated is a collection of early print illustrations with texts of Ovid.

Ancient Reception of Myth in general

As questions of the reception of the Metamorphoses specifically are often difficult to extract from questions about the reception or reworking of particular myths and legends, you can also find out about various strands of Ovidian reception by following the myths.

The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1900s is invaluable and detailed. (It also goes on sale fairly regularly.)

The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature is also a very detailed resource (in multiple volumes).

There is of course A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Myth.

Among the many databases that can be explored, check out Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry

Video Ovid

There is, inevitably, a BBC Ovid with the RSC:

Mary Beard on Ovid (from the set of activities around the Titian exhibition at the Tate):

More obscure, but for those true Ovidio-philes, the launch of the International Ovidian Society last year (including FSU's own Laurel Fulkerson) and a chance to work on your Italian and/or your scholar-ese for over 9 hours (yay!!!):

Finally, I find it delicious that Honore's film Metamorphoses (2014) is of course available to stream on ovid.tv, a platform for independent film: https://www.ovid.tv/videos/metamorphoses

Musical Ovid

Britten, Six Metamorphoses after Ovid:

Philip Glass, Metamorphoses:

Patricia Barber, Persephone (from Mythologies):

Theatrical Ovid

For Mary Zimmerman's production, check out https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/conversation-mary-zimmermans-metamorphoses. You can purchase the play: https://www.amazon.com/Metamorphoses-Play-Mary-Zimmerman/dp/0810119803. The original professional production at the Lookingglass theater: https://lookingglasstheatre.org/event/metamorphoses/

TV Ovid

Perhaps one of the most timely of reinterpretations of Ovid, a list of all the TV tropes that one finds in Ovid's Metamorphoses: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheMetamorphoses

e.g. > A Load of Bull: The Minotaur.

More to come...

Despite running a digital humanities program and trying out the label “humanist” at various points, I am not a huge fan of the term “humanities”, as it has become an empty signifier whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder. (The same is true for “digital” as well as “digital humanities.”) This nyt piece starts with well-trod ground and does an admirable job dismissing familiar dichotomies. The solutions part speaks to directions that appeal very much to me, particularly this bit from the end.

it means undertaking those activities not as experts or sages, but as partners in a continuing dialogue about how we should live together.

This has always been the most important part for me. It's probably why academia fits like a suit too many sizes too small all the time, as that's not the values system on the ground in most places. (Of course, it could just be that I'm a bit too fat for those old clothes. Probably a bit of that too. Where exactly does the generalist or polymathic type fit in? The structure of higher ed doesn't reward that.)

That quote in context provides some ways forwards (and name-drops some initiatives which I have watched with interest and excitement over the years):

Expanding the reach of humanistic education, however, means more than broadening the media channels by which we transmit scholarly insights. It also means putting more thought — and for those who can, financial support — into creating opportunities for humanistic reflection in our everyday lives. This could include helping to design robust liberal arts curriculums for secondary-school students or supporting the growing stable of “great books” schools like the Living Water School in Maryland; working with companies like Books@Work, which use English professors to moderate seminars about short stories in workplaces; and valuing continuing education courses (like those for professionals and older people at Chicago’s Graham School) as seriously as we value traditional undergraduate education. And it means undertaking those activities not as experts or sages, but as partners in a continuing dialogue about how we should live together.

But... (there's always a but), to put on the philology close-reading hat for a moment, this paragraph betrays an undercurrent of insiderism which undercuts some of the message. “expanding the reach of humanistic education” ... “broadening channels by which we” ... “...helping to design” ... “using English professors” ... “valuing continuing education courses.” Those phrases are professors talking to professors. And that's the problem. It's hard to shed the insider discourse, where humanities have a natural home in a university and it's just a matter of reaching outward.

Humanities — whatever is covered by that overly broad label — aren't owned by universities. That universities formed around a core that included the medieval predecessors of “humanities” makes what's left more like a barnacle, a parasite, or a scab. Humanities are not a thing inherent in the university that can be exported. “We” need to de-center the discourse.

The more radical proposition of the piece could be (and they head in this direction but need to go further): What happens if you take that list of activities above — lifelong learning, secondary school curriculum, workplace reading groups — and make that the stuff? Forget the university. Forget “reform”. What happens if we foreground a humanities that is fundamentally (as I think it has always been) outside of the university?

Session 5:

Session 4:

Session 3:

Session 2:

Session 1:

Overview and Schedule

Dr. Allen J. Romano aromano@fsu.edu Associate Teaching Professor, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities

Description

Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of the most popular, enduring, and entertaining works of classical antiquity, among the most imitated poems in the Middle Ages, and a primary source for classical myth today. Chances are that if you've heard a “Greek” myth, you actually know the version by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 CE). In this course we'll explore Ovid's poetic myth-making, what the poem reveals about the Roman take on Greek myths, and Ovid's special place in the pantheon of Latin poets.

Class website

For class extras and things to explore in relation to all the topics we discuss, I have set up a website for us (This website!) at https://write.as/ajr/olli-ovid

The Class

When: Wednesdays, 2:30 to 4:30 PM Where: The comfort of your home, via Zoom

For each class we'll take at least one break at the halfway point.

Zoom Zoom

You will receive an email reminder of the zoom link the morning of our first meeting date.

Schedule

Recordings

I will record the view of my camera (that is, just me; not the zoom session as a whole) in the event that anyone has technical difficulties getting on or has to miss a session. I will make this available to members of the class for the duration of the OLLI semester.

Translations

We will proceed at roughly three books (in modern parlance, “chapters”) per week starting with the second class meeting. As this is an OLLI course, readings are completely optional.

For those who want to read the poem over the course of our 6 class meetings, here are some recommendations:

You are welcome to use any modern translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Below are some recommendations, depending on what you want in a translation. Note that links below are not endorsements; they are simply convenient pointers to the book. All of these books can be found from multiple retailers in both used and new copies.

I will refer to and use Metamorphoses: The New Annotated Edition (2018), translated by Rolfe Humphries with notes by Joseph Reed. ISBN 978-0253033598 https://www.amazon.com/Metamorphoses-New-Annotated-Ovid/dp/0253033594 This edition is useful if you would like a fairly straightforward translation with a reasonable number of scholarly notes for context. The translation is a bit older (from 1958) but the notes are the most up to date.

The Mandelbaum translation is a good poetic option for those who want something with a bit more style. https://www.amazon.com/Ovid-Allen-Mandelbaum-transl-Metamorphoses/dp/B00N4FAYGI/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=mandelbaum+ovid&qid=1601671993&s=books&sr=1-2

Another solid option is Charles Martin, https://www.amazon.com/Metamorphoses-New-Translation-Ovid/dp/039332642X/

As a general note of caution, stay away from free internet editions of translations from the late 19th or earliest 20th century unless you are particularly interested in antiquated English verse.

That said, of the free ones out there on the interwebs, if you don't mind reading off the screen, the translation at https://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses1.html will work in an emergency situation.

It is also likely that there are free versions on the kindle or nook store that are of roughly the same vintage. Just keep in mind that if it sounds particularly formal or antiquated, then that is a feature of the translation more than of Ovid's style.

#classesCurrent