Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Platonic Corpus

关于奥维德通过《变形记》操纵哲学话语的学术研究非常少。在这个狭窄的领域内，人们倾向于将诗歌中充满哲学色彩的比喻、概念和人物视为解释学上的鲱鱼，它们要么从属于文学戏剧的既定议程，1，要么（更激进地）旨在质疑哲学话语的有效性，而不是神话文学话语作为理解世界的一种手段。哲学可以装饰文本的表面，但是奥维德用典型的轻率对待他的模型；我们不应该被欺骗去寻找《变形记》与哲学传统的联系的严肃性或深度，更不要试图把它作为一首以哲学为导向的诗来读。从根本上说，我的研究将挑战这一共识，同时通过研究《变形篇》与柏拉图语料库的关系，帮助填补奥维德批评中的一个相当大的空白。我希望证明，这构成了一种比迄今为止所注意到的更微妙、更普遍的对话，这种对话的阐述可能有助于确立奥维德在哲学传统中以自己的权利作为一个敏锐的、原创的声音。我之所以关注这种柏拉图式的联系，主要有三个原因。首先，因为即使是对《变形记》的粗略阅读，也会发现许多与柏拉图哲学惊人的相似之处，这些相似之处似乎值得更充分的研究。当然，在这首诗的“哲学框架”中，创造论的教义，轮回的末世论，以及基于记忆的灵魂不朽的论点，都让人联想到柏拉图式的比较。但即使在这些更明显的联系之外，奥维德似乎与柏拉图有许多共同的关注，从混合的概念到深刻矛盾的厄洛斯/阿莫尔形象，从诗歌的地位到变化和永恒的基本问题。其次，因为二分法在之前对奥维德与哲学的关系——哲学和神话文学话语、论证和形象——的评价中起到了很大的作用，而柏拉图对二分法本身也进行了彻底的探讨。因此，我们似乎可以这样问，《变形记》是否可以更好地被视为继承和进一步探索哲学（尤其是柏拉图式的）传统内部的这些紧张关系。作为绕过先前存在的关键框架的一种手段。最后，因为尽管有这些有希望的联系——尽管彼得·凯利最近发表了两篇文章——但从柏拉图的作品来看，对奥维德的文本进行系统分析的证据特别少。因此，我的研究不仅在《变形记》的批评中占据了一个空白，而且可能在柏拉图接受领域也占据了一个空白。我希望通过这个项目主要采用互文的方法——依赖于对两位作者段落的仔细阅读——每一章都集中在一个特定的哲学概念上。我还设想了扩展我的论点的可能性，包括考虑“哲学奥维德”与后来的思想家的关系，特别是通过詹巴蒂斯塔·维科发展的“诗意智慧”概念，并暗示某些受维科影响的当代理论家。

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.