A discourse of wonders
Subtitle: audience and performance in Ovid's Metamorphoses
By: Stephen M. Wheeler.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 272
Subjects: Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 or 18 A.D.; Fables, Latin -- History and criticism.; Mythology, Classical, in literature.; Performing arts -- Audiences -- Rome.; Metamorphosis in literature.; Reader-response criticism.
Description: In A Discourse of Wonders, Stephen M. Wheeler introduces a fresh perspective for readers of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Drawing on classical scholarship and twentieth-century literary theory, he argues that the poem is not an anthology or collection but a single continuous performance. Wheeler's thorough, detailed analysis of how Ovid constructs, cultivates, and transforms his audience challenges the assumption that Ovid's narrative persona addresses the reader.

Wheeler proposes instead that Ovid represents himself in the poem as an epic storyteller moved to tell a universal history of metamorphosis in the presence of a fictional audience.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-258) and indexes.