Rhetorical values and aesthetic values in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Abstract

Among Ovid’s writings the catalogue of metamorphoses is a literary convention which is more frequent and more significant than it may be thought. The apparently arid formula of the concepts list acquired rhetorical, philosophical, and none the less aesthetic values under Ovid’s pen. The process of acquiring rich and delicately expressed significations enhanced over the time from the lyrical distiches of his youth, such as Amores or Heroides, over to the poems written during his exile, such as Tristia, the climax being the didactic poem in dactylic hexameter Metamorphoses (1-8 AD), unfinished or in any case unperfected. The use of a literary text as support across time and space for his polemics with personalities of the Roman cultural or political world is in accordance with the nonconformist spirit of Publius Ovidius Naso.

Keywords

• Ovid
• literary catalogue
• metamorphoses
• polemic
• ideology
• intertextuality