It would be difficult to read Ovid's poetry without noticing its multifarious forms of repetition. The volume under review unites an impressive cast of Ovidian scholars in a project that is as timely as it is promising: to give a detailed account of one of the key features of Ovidian poetics, the poet's (or text's?) manifold repetitive gestures.
The volume starts with a useful introduction, whose title, ‘Echoes of the Past’, perhaps gives a more precise idea of what the volume will be about than the book's main title, ‘Repeat Performances’. The idiom in the title does not mean that this book deals with performance studies in epic – it is, for the most part, a book about Ovidian inter- and intratextuality. In addition to concise summaries of the volume's ten chapters, the editors provide a case study of the tale of Narcissus and Echo (pp. 9–15), which neatly sets the tone for the subsequent articles. What in my view is lacking in the introduction is some reference to phenomena and practices of repetition in other Latin poets (say, Lucretius and Virgil) – this becomes especially relevant in the latter half of the introduction, where the editors claim that Ovid, in his use of features of repetition, did no less than shape the practice of repetition for ‘generations of epic poets who come after him’ (p. 9). Indeed, ‘if Ovid can be said to have cannibalized poetry’, the editors continue, ‘those who come after follow suit, using him as both theoretical justification and raw material’ (p. 9). This would, of course, mean an extraordinary literary-historical relevance for the Ovidian modes of repetition under discussion in the volume; but the plausibility of this claim may be questioned. Seneca the Younger, to give one example, as big an Ovidian as any of those ‘who come after’ though not an epic poet, uses not Ovid to justify modes of imitation and repetition, but Virgil (Epistle 84).
A. Feldherr reads the Phaethon episode in the Metamorphoses as a commentary ‘on the hermeneutic consequences of repetition itself’ (p. 27). The episode's repetitive aspects all hinge on the ecphrasis of the sculptural programme on the doors of the Sun's palace, which Feldherr singles out to negotiate the issue whether ‘our emphasis should fall on words becoming things or things becoming words’ (p. 42). Most of all, Feldherr's chapter is an essay on the challenges posed by the relationship between representation and reality. His sophisticated contribution makes for very good comparative reading with A. Schiesaro's recent article on Lucretian presences in the Metamorphoses (JRS 81 [2014], 73–104).
B. Weiden Boyd provides a lucid comparative analysis of Ovid's use, in Ars 2 and Met. 4, of a Homeric narrative, the betrayal of Hephaestus (as told by Demodocus in Od. 8). Boyd follows Ovid in singling out the features in Homer that are either suppressed, compressed or expanded in a calculated Ovidian mixture. This article persuasively demonstrates the differences between Ovid and his model, and is particularly effective in tying this in with the didactic trajectory of the Ars.
P. Heslin's article is focused on Ovid's Cycnus episode and its Homeric pedigree, complementing earlier treatments (M. Möller, GFA 6 [2003], 51–66, and S. Papaioannou, Redesigning Achilles [2007]). The article's key contribution is the argument that ‘Ovid invites his readers to re-experience the whole of the Iliad in a new light afforded by his wholesale undermining of the objectivity of the epic voice’ (p. 69). The complex implications of this claim come to the fore, for instance, in Heslin's interpretation of Nestor's gaps in memory in Met. 12: according to Heslin, Nestor's admission of memory gaps cause ‘the narrative to self-deconstruct’ and ‘destroy the suspension of disbelief’ (p. 75). But is it not possible for readers to realise that a character within the narration is unreliable, without encountering a ‘deconstruction’ of the whole epic narrative? In the case of the episode in Met. 12 this seems quite possible to me: we even get another character within the narrative, Tlepolemus, challenging Nestor on his ‘gaps in memory’. More generally, I believe that for this chapter's wide-reaching interpretation to be plausible we would have to imagine readers who are, at the same time, rather subtle readers of Ovid (who would notice the complexities of epic narration and intertextuality H. posits for Ovid) and rather basic readers of Homer (who would not realise that there are already complications when it comes to ‘epic objectivity’ in the Homeric epics).
A. Augoustakis argues that the Hecuba episode in Met. 13 plays a role more significant than previously acknowledged in Ovid's introduction of his ‘Little Aeneid’. In particular, Augoustakis discusses how Hecuba's anger recalls the final lines of Virgil's Aeneid. Augoustakis's analysis contains many valuable insights, but I was left wondering about a few aspects: what exactly is meant or implied in the use of ‘sema’ and ‘the problematics of ira’? How should the interesting section on ‘vision and liminality’ be connected to the article's overall concern? All in all, repetition –‘recycling’ – serves Augoustakis as a useful lens through which to read the Hecuba story and discuss both its inter- and intratextual elements.
D. Krasne provides a close reading of Fasti 5 ‘in light of its astonishingly orderly slew of connections not just within itself but with the Metamorphoses' (p. 125). Krasne complements previous fruitful scholarship on links between the Fasti and the Metamorphoses and on the internal dynamics of Fasti 5 by drawing careful attention to the ‘Divine Succession Myth’. Through her subtle interpretation, succession emerges as the key thematic concern of Fasti 5, the book on the mensis Maius. Krasne also explores the possibilities of a political reading of the succession theme.
S.L. James looks at large-scale patterns of rape and repetition in the Metamorphoses. She identifies four types of ‘rape’ in the Met. and claims that each of them would, for a Roman reader, recall tales of Rome's own mytho-historical past, all of which are told by Livy (pp. 157–8, table 6.1). James also compares the rapes in the Fasti (p. 166, table 6.2). The approach in this chapter, while bringing out useful patterns, also means that some of James's discussions cannot account for the finer complexities of the passages under scrutiny.
P.E. Knox's article, ‘Metamorphoses in a Cold Climate’, is a fine study of patterns of repetition in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. By focusing on three examples (Actaeon in Met. 3 and at Trist. 2.103–8; Phaethon in the Met. and at Trist. 1.69–82; the epilogue of the Met., Trist. 3.7.45–54 and 4.10.125–32), the chapter demonstrates with great clarity how Ovid rewrites his earlier poetry. Knox identifies verbal repetition as ‘the definitive marker of this type of revision’ (p. 179) and shows how Ovid's reworkings also allow new levels of meaning to emerge in the stories within their earlier contexts. This is an excellent study, but I was wondering about the reference to Kristeva's original definition of intertextuality (p. 178): I found this to be somewhat at odds with Knox's own hermeneutic language throughout the piece, which relies on Ovid's deliberate craftsmanship.
After a summary of noted facets of repetition in Ovid's poetry and its reception, A. Keith examines the engagement with Ovidian myths in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, Statius' Thebaid and Silius Italicus' Punica. For each author, Keith builds on previous scholarship on the intertextual nature of the Flavian epics, shows how readers are alerted early on to the (post-)Ovidian dimension, and pays careful attention to shared diction. In her analysis, she argues, for instance, that Valerius explores some of the erotic underpinnings of his essentially martial epic by using the Ovidian precedent of integrating desire and violence in epic. In tracing Statius' Ovidian inheritance, Keith brings out a very interesting ‘Cadmean paradigm (of wandering in exile)’ (p. 211). Accumulatively, this chapter makes clear that recognising the recycling of crucial Ovidian myths and echoes is key if one wants to understand Flavian epic poetics.
N.W. Bernstein, employing the online tool Tesserae, provides a quantitative analysis of ‘Ovidian’ Silius. This chapter retains some work-in-progress qualities, but complements the statistical results with some more in-depth interpretative remarks on the value of data that are gathered based on verbal similarity only. Bernstein's piece makes a plea for using automated search engines such as Tesserae in philological research, but at the same time illustrates the dangers of relying solely on verbal markers of allusion and intertextuality.
More so than Ovid, Claudian has suffered from value judgements about the – at best – ‘secondary’ and ‘repetitive’ nature of his epic. In S. Hinds's hands, the De raptu Proserpinae is reinserted into the canon of aesthetically engaging Latin poetry as an epic ‘that knows how to use repetition as a force for artistic good’ (p. 250). Hinds demonstrates the possibilities of the volume's interest in ‘repetition’ and extends it to answer a question of textual criticism (pp. 256–8): whether Persephone is abducted from the palaeographically similar but geographically dissimilar locus amoenus Enna or the locus horridus Etna. Hinds makes plausible that the poem's modern editors, due to their misguided views of Claudian's skill as a poet, did not allow him the Ovidian locus of repetition (Enna); rather, they assumed that he would prefer the medieval scribes' lectio facilior (Etna). (Pace Heinsius and those who got it right in following him, such as Koch's 1893 Teubner text.) Etna, however, as Hinds argues, is meaningful in the topographical ecphrasis at 3.334, where it should be retained. Hinds also adumbrates further stimulating points about Claudian's role as a poet of liminality, a writer not only between East and West but also between paganism and Christianity (‘envoi 1’, pp. 270–1), and one whose poem ends on a coastline (‘envoi 2’, p. 271). Hinds's piece provides a satisfying conclusion to the volume's offerings.
The book (including its cover) is beautifully produced. There are useful indexes and relatively few typos and other errors. The volume is a rewarding contribution to Ovidian scholarship and to studies in Latin inter- and intratextuality more generally.
