The Lives of Others

Ovid’s Poetics of Biofiction (Metamorphoses 10-11.84)

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21798461
AutoresIoannis Ziogas (0000-0003-0126-537X, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume22
Data de publicação2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoDictynna (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1765-3142 • E-ISSN: 1969-4202
EditoraOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/15a2f
OpenAlexW4416990940
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas44

This article reads the myth of Orpheus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 10-11.84 through the lens of the ancient tradition of the Lives of poets. In this part of his epic, Ovid stages a number of interauthorial encounters with the life and poetry of Orpheus, Euripides, and Cinna. He simultaneously inserts himself in the canon of great poets and creates the poets of the past in his own image. By bringing together different narrative layers and ontological realities, Ovid highlights the close connection between the poetics of biofiction and his Metamorphoses. Ovid’s version of Orpheus is metabiographical; Orphic beliefs about the afterlife become an inseparable part of Ovid’s poetics of biofiction, which blur the lines between life and death

Afterlife · Mythology · Narrative · Poetics · Poetry · Classical Antiquity Studies · Freedom of Expression and Defamation · Joseph Conrad and Literature