Metadiegesis in Orpheus' song: a study on the multiplication of narrative voices in book X of Ovid's metamorphoses

Abstract

This research project aims to examine the tenth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses concurrently considering the specificities of disposition and the multiplication of narrative voices in this section, and interpreting the meaning of this book within the totality of the work. To this end, we will take into account the generic question posed in the poem: it is a plural and fragmentary work that will hardly fit exclusively into the epic genre. It is rather a plural whole where the mixing of genres is constant - a a game of tensions and complementarities. Thus, the two central features of the tenth book - the fact that the narration is "given" to a character, Orpheus, and the erotic content of his stories - seem to contribute to a destabilization of the epic genre, both in terms of utterance and matter. Consequently, we firstly propose a close look at the myths that make up the book in question: its enchainment, the interrelationships between them and the weight of its narrator, Orpheus, in both the selection of myths and the way to approach them. Taking that into account, we will investigate the similarities and, above all, the distinctions between Orpheus - as a narrator - and main narrator of the work, considering the literature that regards this section as a programmatic moment of the Metamorphoses and interprets it as a miniature of the work itself.