rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Reflections in a serpent's eye
    sub title: Thebes in Ovid's Metamorphoses
  name:
    name part: Janan, Micaela Wakil.
    role:
      role term: creator
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  genre: Electronic books.
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: enk
    place:
      place term: Oxford
    place:
      place term: New York
    publisher: Oxford University Press
    date issued: 2009
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: remote
    extent: 1 online resource (viii, 276 pages)
  abstract: Ovid's extraordinary story of Thebes' founding and bloody unravelling spans Books 2 and 3 of his epic poem, the Metamorphoses. His bizarre refractions of the well‐ordered community mirror Ovid's own Rome and the mythohistory of its origins, most particularly as framed in Vergil's Aeneid. The Aeneid has regularly been read as, demonstrating how and why Rome will stride forward into history and an ‘empire without end'. This book uses the psychoanalytic theory of Freud and Lacan to argue that The Metamorphoses' strangely fantastical surface reflects what is already inherently perverse in that master‐narrative and discloses its internal contradictions. Ovid's Thebes features supernatural transformations, perverse fascinations, and violent end: Actaeon turned deer and the victim of his own hounds, Narcissus fatally captivated by his own image, Pentheus ripped apart by his mother and aunt. Ovid's reflections on how and why Thebes comes together—and how it comes unstuck—sceptically interrogate not only the existing (Roman) political order, claimed asiasting truth, but also the very possibility of organizing any polity into a harmonious, organically unified, lasting institution. Ovid thus poses doubts and questions crucial to the whole epic genre and its stress on collective identity as a function of a particular city‐state. His Metamorphoses probes the logical principles of the ordered human community—its cohesion, identity, and governance—revealing a hidden bond between the epic Doomed City (Troy, Thebes, Carthage) and the City of Manifest Destiny (Rome). In Ovid's ‘tale of two cities' each logically defines and suppors the other. By asking, ‘What does it mean to be a polity? a citizen of a polity?', Ovid poses questions centred upon the concept of identity. His Theban cycle thus asks even more radically, ‘What is identity? What shapes it? What changes it?' To explicate Ovid's critique of epic nationalism and identity, a series of close readings of episodes from Books 3 a…
  table of contents: Introduction: 'Happy birthday, Romulus' -- 'In nomine patris': Ovid's Theban law -- 'Th' unconquerable will, and study of revenge': Juno in Thebes -- Narcissus and Echo: the arrows of love's errors -- 'Through a glass, darkly': Narcissus as Oedipus -- Pentheus monsters Thebes -- Ovid and the epic traditon: the post-Augustans.
  note: Micaela Janan.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  subject:
    geographic code: e-gr---
    geographic code: e------
    geographic code: aw-----
    geographic code: ff-----
  subject:
    name:
      name part: Ovid
      name part: 43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D
  subject:
    title info:
      title: Metamorphoses (Ovid)
  subject:
    geographic: Thebes (Greece)
    topic: In literature
  subject:
    geographic: Rome
    topic: In literature
  subject:
    geographic: Thèbes (Grèce)
    topic: Dans la littérature
  subject:
    topic: TRAVEL
    topic: Special Interest
    topic: Literary
  subject:
    topic: LITERARY CRITICISM
    topic: General
  subject:
    topic: Literature
  subject:
    geographic: Greece
    geographic: Thebes
  subject:
    geographic: Rome (Empire)
  classification: PA6519.M9 J36 2009eb
  classification: 873/.01
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Reflections in a serpent's eye
    name:
      name part: Janan, Micaela Wakil.
    origin info:
      publisher: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009
    identifier: (DLC) 2009931634
    identifier: (OCoLC)430842447
  identifier: 9780191572258
  identifier: 019157225X
  identifier: 9780191721021
  identifier: 0191721026
  identifier: 9780199556922
  identifier: 019955692X
  identifier: http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login
  record info:
    record content source: N$T
    record creation date: 100217
    record change date: 20260318175234.0
    record identifier: in00005704671
    language of cataloging:
      language term: eng