Mutata corpora: Ovid's Changing Forms and the Metamorphic Bodies of Pantomime Dancing

This article reads Ovid's foregrounding of the human body in the Metamorphoses side by side with the most flamboyant public discourse of Augustan Rome where the body was similarly privileged as a medium of communication, namely pantomime dancing, an expression-filled dance form predicated on th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTransactions of the American Philological Association (1974) Vol. 143; no. 1; pp. 105 - 152
Main Author LADA-RICHARDS, ISMENE
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University Press 01.04.2013
Johns Hopkins University Press
Subjects
Classical literature
Foregrounding
Human body
Latin literature
Ovid (43 BC-17 AD)
Philology
Poetry
Poets
Roman civilization
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Summary:This article reads Ovid's foregrounding of the human body in the Metamorphoses side by side with the most flamboyant public discourse of Augustan Rome where the body was similarly privileged as a medium of communication, namely pantomime dancing, an expression-filled dance form predicated on the mute delineation of character and passion. Ovdi's body-centered poetic vision is informed by the haunting materiality of the staged, dancing body, whose electrifying language had a searing effect on his literary imagination. Reading the Metamorphoses through the lens of pantomime dancing illuminates the profound, albeit underexplored, symbiosis of dance and poetry in Augustan Rome.
ISSN:0360-5949
1533-0699
2575-7180
1533-0699
2575-7199
DOI:10.1353/apa.2013.0001