Die Bedeutung der Buchgliederung für die kompositionelle Gestaltung der Metamorphosen Ovids
The meaning of book division for the compositional form of the Metamorphoses of Ovid

Summary/Abstract: The macrostructure of Ovid's Metamorphoses is a hitherto unsolved problem. Earlier studies entirely ignore the structure of books given by the author and impose a disposition totally alien to the transmitted grouping of books. On the other hand, more recent approaches emphasize the division of the poem into 15 books and try especially to demonstrate that five book groups are the main structural principle in order to draw from this far reaching conclusions. Deviating from these approaches, the present article intends to dismiss the thesis of a macrostructural order of epochs and rather to understand the single books as autonomous structural units which owe their attractiveness to the tension arising between two main parts of either epic or elegiac content. This tension characterizes the whole of the single books as reading units and also the transitions between single books.

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