Locus suspectus
The Uncanny Landscape of Invidia's Lair (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.760–764)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13044761 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Miriam Kamil (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 70-89 |
| Publication date | 2021-02-22 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Preternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2161-2188 • E-ISSN: 2161-2196 |
| Publisher | The Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5325/preternature.10.1.0070 |
| OpenAlex | W3130805122 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
In translating unheimlich, “uncanny,” into Latin, Freud offers a term inseparable from landscape: locus suspectus, “suspicious place.” As this term indicates, certain literary landscapes have the power to unnerve and disorient a reader. Ovid, recognized as a virtuoso of the locus amoenus, is also master of the locus suspectus, constructing uncanny landscapes in the Metamorphoses that provoke the reader's dread and expose our latent existential fears. Taking as a prime example the lair of Invidia at Met. 2.760–764, I demonstrate how Ovid uses intertextual reference and etymological wordplay to endow his setting with dreadful detail that transports the reader to the haunted underworld and to primordial chaos where boundaries collapse. The resulting landscape encapsulates the Freudian concept of the uncanny and so offers a vital counterpart to the locus amoenus in the study of Ovidian landscape
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Existentialism · Freudian slip · Literature · Locus (genetics · Psychoanalysis · Uncanny · Classical Antiquity Studies · Philosophy · Psychology
Violence and the Sacred
The Scapegoat
The Uncanny Valley [From the Field]
Virgil's Georgics and the Art of Reference
Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.760-64
The Shade of Orpheus
La cosmogonía de las Metamorfosis de Ovidio y las Rapsodias órficas
Personification Allegory in the Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses
Tempestuous Poetry
The Hercules-Cacus Episode in Aeneid VIII
Virgil, "Aeneid" 6
Putting Dido on the Map
Invidia and the End of Georgics 1
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |