Ovid’s Poetics of Dismemberment; Fasti 2.73-121
Ovid’s Poetics of Dismemberment; Fasti 2.73-121

Summary/Abstract: Our principal focus in this article will be the elucidation of the Arion star myth narrated by Ovid at Fasti 2.73-121. The methodology we adopt is unusual and involves redividing the text and reformulating it in order to access subtextual meanings. In order to contextualise this approach we first consider Tristia 3.9 in detail with special reference to the role of the ‘speculator’ (‘the look-out’). The intention is to reveal the polysemantic flavour of Ovid’s art which uses allegory, intertextuality, and etymological threads, to create a text that resounds with ‘mille sonos’ (‘a thousand sounds’: Fasti 2.119). We hope to persuade readers of Ovid that his grasp of astronomy, particularly the rising and setting of stars, is technically faultless. Any apparent discrepancies are in fact the result of our failure to apply Ovid’s poetics to the task in hand.

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