Post date: Sep 25, 2016 10:57:02 PM
Reading Ovid's work Metamophoses, got me thinking in a different way than other books we had read. I never really knew how to feel about it. I enjoyed his writing style and subtle jokes he would make and how he never seemed to state anything as a fact, mostly hearsay. The beginning of the book started with calling the divine muses for inspiration again but then he kinda lost me throughout it. The stories were good, I just wasn't feeling his writing like I did any of our other works. Feeling lost, I turned towards the introduction and note sections of the book and got a lot out of those.
Ovid listed a lot of myths that persist even to today so I did not think anything much of the stories he told. However, in the introduction it said that Ovid would get in trouble with Augustus a lot because he did not follow the so called "family values" that Augustus was trying to establish and was seen as a very raunchy and adult writer. This gave me a different take on his writings. Infidelity. Cheating. Narcissism. These are all things very ingrained into my culture and seem almost normal which is why I never really thought anything about any of his stories. Placing them in the context of his time, they get a new aura of being risque and seem more interesting. Also, these stories seem played out to me as they remind me of the book of Genesis and myths that I have already heard. In Ovid's time, these would all be new and exciting stories. I feel like I was just the wrong audience for the book and this work probably is not going to be my favorite.