Narcissus and Pygmalion Illusion and Spectacle in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Free Download Gianpiero Rosati, "Narcissus and Pygmalion: Illusion and Spectacle in Ovid's Metamorphoses"
English | ISBN: 0198852436 | 2022 | 202 pages | MOBI | 610 KB
Nature imitates art-not a paradox from Oscar Wilde's pen, but instead the bold formulation of the Latin poet Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE), marking a radical turning point in ancient aesthetics, founded on the principle of mimesis. For Ovid, art is independent of reality, not its mirror: by enhancing phantasia, the artist's creative imagination and the simulacrum's primacy over reality, Ovid opens up unexplored perspectives for future European literature and art. Through an examination of Narcissus and Pygmalion, figures of illusion and desire, who are the protagonists of two major episodes of the Metamorphoses, Rosati sheds light on some crucial junctures in the history of reception and aesthetics. Narcissus and Pygmalion has, since its first publication in Italian, contributed to the poet's critical fortunes over the past few decades through its combination of sophisticated literary critical thinking and patient argument applied to the poetics of self-reflexivity and, in particular, to the fundamental interface between the verbal and the visual in the