HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By th’ mass, and ’tis: like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale.
Polonius: Very like a whale.
Shakespeare, Hamlet iii.ii.365–701
The subject of this book is the simile in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. For readers familiar with the epic similes of Homer, Virgil, or Milton this might seem an eccentric choice. The epic simile is defined through its grand lineage, deriving much of its force from the sweeping architecture of these epics, as it builds a superstructure of imagery that makes the cosmos reflect human fate, whether in mass scenes or in the concentrated psychology of a single hero. In comparison, Ovid’s epic looks like a complicated tangle of tales that overwhelms the reader with the visual detail of mythical landscapes and bizarre transformations, threatening to render superfluous the similes’ illustrating properties and drown their impact in episodes of limited reach. Parody and imitation, those banes of Ovidian scholarship, seem the only viable explanations for Ovid’s use of the figure. For those not so easily satisfied, the problem may be turned on its head: how does the simile react with this new context? This epic which is not quite an epic, containing characters that transform into and not merely resemble animals, poses a unique challenge for the poet, as well as a chance for a reader to reflect on the essential aspect of the Metamorphoses: identity.
Simile and metamorphosis share obvious affinities in their preoccupation with manipulating shape, either physically or mentally. In finding similarities in disparate entities, in seeing one thing as another, both highlight the importance of surface impressions for construing identity. Metamorphosis may even be seen as carrying simile to an extreme: if one thing can look like another, what keeps it from actually being another thing altogether, or prevents it from sliding from resemblance into sameness? While in metamorphosis the transformation is permanent and locked in the physical reality of the changed body, the suggestive power of the simile affects the perception of the thing compared without physically changing it. The relation of these two positions forms the core of this study that explores the status of the simile in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a poem about “forms changed into new bodies” (In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas/ corpora, Met. 1.1–2).
Forms and bodies, like style and substance, make an artificial conceptual pair that suggests the desire and even the possibility of separating one from the other. However, scholars such as Pianezzola, Rosati, Barkan, Schmidt, Tissol, and Hardie 2 have drawn attention to the link between the figurative language of the poem and some of its central problems. This book follows their lead, taking as starting point the structure of the simile itself, in the connection and divide between tenor and vehicle that captures a tension based on both similarity and contrast. While the simile seems at first to be concerned with likeness, it is as vital (sometimes even more so) to see the contrast, the difference that counteracts the tendency to sameness and closure.3 Identity emerges as the central issue, of how it is construed and undermined, and what role likeness plays in its formation and perception. While the first two chapters deal with human and divine identity, and thus deal chiefly with the characters in the poem, the last two chapters concern the form of the poem itself in discussing its genre and its fictional status. The question of identity may then be asked not only of an individual but also of a genre or a poem: what constitutes epic, and do generic markers like the simile affect more than the surface? How do we discern the illusions of the fictional world from those of our own, and how does Ovid’s fiction relate to our experience of reality given the poem’s aetiological claims?
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a poem that rejects categorization at every turn, poses the unique challenge for interpreting the simile in context, and one that has hitherto defied attempts at offering a unified theory on its role. In contrast to the epics of his predecessors, Ovid’s poem does not yield, or even make desirable, a consistent pattern. Models of reading the simile as expression of sustained imagery, as in Homer, Virgil, and Apollonius, may not be used in the context of the Metamorphoses. The absence of a single hero or sustained martial action precludes associations of specific animals with an individual or group (as in Homer’s lion similes),4 while the episodic structure of the narrative, with its variety of range and tone, precludes a consistent set of imagery being used to reinforce a moral message (as in the bestialization of Turnus).5
It would render Ovid’s multifaceted poem a disservice to conduct business as usual. Of the surprisingly few studies that have been undertaken, the earlier ones restrict themselves to classifying Ovid’s similes according to his models and subject matter.6 Even Brunner’s study which attempts to find the difference between Ovid’s epic and elegiac similes leans heavily on formal criteria, such as length and source material.7 On a different plane, the idea of relating the poem’s figurative language, including metaphor, to its subject, metamorphosis, led to the concept of protometamorphosis, a term coined by Barkan8 and later developed fully in Kaufhold’s study, which regards figurative language as a preliminary stage that prepares the reader for the ensuing transformation.9 While the idea that metamorphosis is the result of reified figurative language has been accepted widely, the linearity of this argument misses the complexities and contradictions of the Metamorphoses. By considering metaphor, rather than simile, central to the interpretation of metamorphosis, previous scholarship has largely neglected the lack of resolution in the ambiguous nature of the transformed victim. The mismatched outside and inside of a person leads to conflicting emotions, social status, and behavior, all of them prolonged in perpetuity. The simile’s openness offers a way to capture such contradictions and explore their meaning.
Instead of following more conventional treatments, it is profitable to look at simile as a key to the poem that opens new avenues of interpretation. To this end, the discussion clusters around four chapter headings, each representing a central issue in scholarship on the Metamorphoses today, showing how the flexibility of the figure adapts to a variety of purposes. In each, the simile functions as a point of departure for reading a particular episode in the light of wider debates. Close readings of a select choice of similes mark the simile as a unique place for reflecting on the issues of its immediate and wider context.
The first chapter looks at the phenomenon of metamorphosis through the lens of the simile as it brings out the lack of resolution and clarity in both the process and the end result of the transformation. Previous scholarship has linked the figurative language of the poem to its subject matter, as signaled by the considerable overlap of the vocabulary of metamorphosis with that of several rhetorical figures.10 The privileged status of metaphor over the simile in this debate has created an imbalance that needs to be rectified. Noting the fundamental difference between metaphor and simile allows for a different perception of metamorphosis. Using metaphor as model reinforces the finality of metamorphosis, mirroring the distortion of the transformed body in the distortion of the language. Simile, by contrast, puts two shapes in relation to each other but leaves their essential identity untouched. The comparison “A (tenor) is like B (vehicle)” necessitates keeping both shapes in view. Thanks to its bipartite structure, simile captures the inherent tension in both the process of transition from one body to the other and the hybrid being that is part human, part non-human. As a result, metamorphosis may be viewed as a potentially open phenomenon that resists classification or closure.
This theoretical introduction prefaces close readings of episodes that highlight the tension inherent in metamorphosis through the use of simile. Three episodes stand out in which the perception of the body as marker of human identity for oneself and others is threatened by metamorphosis and dismemberment: Actaeon, Pentheus, and Orpheus. Actaeon undergoes metamorphosis as a deer, Pentheus is perceived as a boar by Agave, and Orpheus, despite being recognizably human, is torn apart by animal-like maenads. The dehumanizing treatment is countered by the simile, adding another visual dimension to scenes full of delusion and mental conflict as the reader recreates the scene before his inner eye. Layers of identity are equally central to the metamorphosis of Hyacinthus which refutes the theory of protometamorphosis (that is, simile as dress rehearsal for the later transformation). Rather than confirming an essential continuity between the victim and the later flower, the simile shows that the conventional markers of his person are not sufficient for establishing his individual identity. This latent instability also becomes palpable in instances in which the simile interferes at the exact moment of transformation, in which both the before and after shape are held in balance. The simile comments on three different ways (art, science, magic) to account for the mystery of metamorphosis.
The second chapter focuses on the divine in the poem and the question of both their disguise and true identity. Complementary to the first chapter, the role of appearance in construing and visualizing divine identity is explored. In particular, the collusion of divine and animal as non-human “other” forms the focus of a series of similes that have the god in the tenor of the simile. The first part of the chapter concerns the relation of gods and birds in sharing the air, an area that is taboo for humans, and in their close visual resemblance. As point of departure, the scholiasts’ critique of the gods as birds in the Homeric poems marks the ambivalent status of these animals as potential manifestations of the divine which leads to a new reading of the Icarus episode. In the following section, a thematically linked series of similes about gods and bulls culminates in a discussion on the role of the god in sacrifice and the roles of man, animal, and divine in this triangle. The chapter concludes with a discussion of instances of epiphany in which the true form of the divine is approximated by the simile.
The third chapter concerns the intrinsic genre value of the epic simile. The simile as epic agent in a generically diverse poem accentuates the interaction of epic with other genres. The chapter shows the interaction of the epic simile with other genres, namely elegy and tragedy, as well its constitutive role for epic itself. The Ceyx episode examines how Ovid manipulates the form of the epic simile through exaggeration and reversal of tenor and vehicle. The Hecuba episode shows how tragic and epic elements reinforce each other as allusion through the simile works in guiding genre expectations. An examination of the episode of Apollo and Daphne shows the consequences of epicizing the erotic in the paradox of amatory epic, while Achilles’ unsuccessful battle with Cycnus critically views the aesthetics of war as a key ingredient to the enjoyment of epic.
The fourth chapter examines how simile engages with the issue of fictionality. Since similes are the domain of the reader even when they are ostensibly focalized by a character inside fiction, they serve as a bridge between the inside and the outside of the poem. Similes are shown as a screen that both allows and withholds access to the image of Narcissus’ subjective viewing. The mirror image poses an ekphrastic dilemma for the narrator and reader as sameness cannot be recreated by likeness. The following section on fictional belief discusses the dreams in the House of Sleep as a matter of depicting mental processes and analyses the reader’s gradual engagement with the fictional world. The ephemeral nature of the simile perfectly captures the illusionist character of dreams. A final discussion on anachronism in the simile notes the disruption of the fictional illusion as it reveals the contemporary reader as a presence in the text and highlights the effects of audience manipulation.
1 Wells, S. and Taylor, G. (eds.) William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd edn, Oxford, 2005.
2 Pianezzola (1979), Rosati (1983), Barkan (1986), Schmidt (1991), Tissol (1997), and Hardie (1999, 2002, 2004).
3 Feeney (1992), 36–7.
4 Lonsdale (1990).
5 Hornsby (1970).
6 Washietl (1883), Owen (1931), Wilkins (1932), and Richardson (1964).
7 Brunner (1966, 1971) and von Albrecht (1999), 166–77 examine the function of the simile in its narrative context but view Ovid mostly through Homeric and Virgilian precedent.
8 Barkan (1986), 20.
9 Kaufhold (1993, 1997).
10 Ahl (1985), Hardie (2002), 228.