Ovid*s Metamorphoses

Group Read-aloud (text will be displayed onscreen during the meetup)
Today we are continuing our interlude from Metamorphoses to spend a few sessions reading the classic tragedy The Bacchae by Euripides (405 BC). Last time we read Act ; today we will finish Act (there are five acts). We are doing The Bacchae because we have just covered Ovid*s version of the story of Cadmus and the fall of the House of Thebes - The Bacchae is the original version. Before we read we will watch a brief video clip summary, so we can enjoy reading the play aloud without getting too caught up in the plot intricacies. If you are new, welcome. Come ready to take your turn and ham it up!

Welcome to Ovid*s Metamorphoses! Please feel free to log in five or ten minutes early to work out any technical issues you might be having or just to say hello. We hope to start on time. If you have enabled any form of AI, recording, or transcribing before entering, please exit the meeting, disable it, and re-enter the session. Do NOT click Yes for Zoom AI "Assistance" when entering Zoom.
The meeting hosts will put David Raeburn*s English translation up on the screen, and we will all take turns reading aloud. You can join us at any point in the series of meetings. No special knowledge or preparation is necessary; all you have to do is show up. You do not need a copy of the book, nor do you need to read anything in advance. We won*t be recording this, so please keep your camera on for friendliness if you feel comfortable doing so.
Warning: the book’s content may be triggering for some trauma survivors. It contains multiple descriptions of sexual assault, incest, murder, infanticide, family violence, kidnapping, death, blood, pregnancy, plague, starvation, warfare, racism, sexism, and the hunting and killing of animals, as well as male-female, male-male and female-female sexual relationships and transsexuality.
That being said, the poem*s lyric beauty and wealth of stories are unsurpassed in world literature; its tales and themes have inspired artists ever since.
This is a slow, thoughtful reading group with time for discussion. We pause to savor felicitous phrases and share our emotional responses to the stories, and to spotlight recurring images and explore which stories they link together. Along the way we*re learning about the morals, customs, and beliefs of Greco-Roman antiquity, some of which were very different from our own. We stay close to the text, mentally putting ourselves in the place of the original audience, while inevitably of course comparing their worldviews with ours, thereby sliding through a continuous doublemindedness that is itself a series of metamorphoses.
Resources:
A free audiobook version of the Raeburn translation can be found here: archive.org. Wikisource has a number of older translations here: Metamorphoses Translations. The one on there by Golding was the one available in English in Shakespeare*s era. (Shakespeare himself did use at least one portion that appears only in the Latin version.)
Group members are welcome to prepare a presentation for the group on any Ovid-related topic. This can take up all or part of a session. The only caveat is no spoilers – please plan your presentation for after the group has read and discussed a particular story. (Please contact Madeline two weeks in advance about scheduling. Since inspiration may strike you after a story is past, we*ll be happy to slot your presentation in even if it*s long after we*ve read the story.)
Free online resources for many things Ovidian are listed at the bottom of the event description on all of the January Ovid meeting pages.
Ovid*s long and astonishing poem Metamorphoses has resounded throughout Western civilization for two thousand years. Exuberant, sophisticated, witty, harrowing, ambiguous, and sublimely beautiful, this compilation of Greek and Roman mythology is one of the foundational works of Western culture. Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Goethe and Joyce, as well as contemporary authors such as Samuel R. Delany, Ada Palmer, and Richard Powers, have drawn upon it for themes and imagery. Metamorphoses was composed in Latin circa 8 C.E. by Publius Ovidus Naso (Ovid), a Roman poet, public intellectual, and man about town. Many of his upper-class urban contemporaries were atheists who were familiar with these tales, so nuance, presentation, and poetic skill were all.