Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Platonic Corpus

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Scholarship on Ovid's manipulation of philosophical discourse through the Metamorphoses is notably sparse. Within this narrow field, the tendency has been to view the philosophically-inflected tropes, concepts, and characters which populate the poem as hermeneutic red herrings, which are either subordinate to a perceived agenda of literary play,1 or (more radically) designed to question the validity of philosophical over mytho-literary discourse as a means of understanding the world. 2 Philosophy may adorn the text's surface, but Ovid treats his models with typical flippancy; we should not be deceived into looking for any seriousness or depth to the Metamorphoses' engagement with the philosophical tradition, much less attempt to read it altogether as a philosophically-oriented poem. At root, my research would challenge this consensus, whilst helping to fill a sizeable gap in Ovidian criticism, by examining the Metamorphoses' relationship to the Platonic corpus. I hope to demonstrate that this constitutes a subtler and more pervasive dialogue than has hitherto been noted, one whose exposition may aid in establishing Ovid as a perceptive and original voice within the philosophical tradition in his own right.I focus on this Platonic nexus for three principal reasons. First, because even a cursory reading of the Metamorphoses yields a number of striking parallels to Plato's philosophy, which seem to merit fuller investigation. Certainly, the creationist doctrine, eschatology of reincarnation, and memory-based argument for the soul's immortality forwarded in the poem's 'philosophical frame' each invite Platonic comparison. But even beyond these more apparent links, Ovid seems to share a number of preoccupations with Plato, from the notion of hybridity to the profoundly ambivalent figure of Eros/Amor, from the status of poetry to fundamental questions of flux and permanence. Second, because the binaries which have greatly informed preceding evaluations of Ovid's relationship to philosophy - of philosophical and mytho-literary discourse, argument and image - are themselves radically probed at by Plato.3 It seems feasible, therefore, to ask whether the Metamorphoses might better be viewed as inheriting and further exploring these tensions from within the philosophical (and particularly the Platonic) tradition, as one means of circumnavigating pre-existent critical frameworks. And lastly, because despite such promising connections - and a recent pair of articles by Peter Kelly notwithstanding4 - systematic analysis of Ovid's text in view of Plato's writings is particularly thin on the ground. My research would thus occupy a lacuna not just in criticism on the Metamorphoses, but potentially also in the field of Platonic reception.I anticipate utilising a chiefly intertextual methodology through this project - reliant on close readings of passages from both authors - with each chapter focussing on a particular philosophical concept. I also envisage the possibility of extending my argument to include a consideration of where a 'philosophical Ovid' may stand in relation to later thinkers, tracing a path particularly through the concept of 'poetic wisdom' as developed by Giambattista Vico, and by implication toward certain contemporary theorists who wear Vico's influence.