Seriously playful: philosophy in the myths of Ovid's Metamorphoses

This thesis aims to lay to rest arguments about whether Ovid is or is not a philosophical poet in the Metamorphoses. It does so by differentiating between philosophical poets and poetic philosophers; the former write poetry freighted with philosophical discourse while the latter write philosophy in a poetic medium. Ovid, it is argued, should be categorised as a philosophical poet, who infuses philosophical ideas from various schools into the Metamorphoses, producing a poem that, all told, neither expounds nor attacks any given philosophical school, but rather uses philosophy to imbue its constituent myths with greater wit, poignancy and psychological realism. Myth and philosophy are interwoven so intricately that it is impossible to separate them without doing violence to Ovid’s poem. It is not argued here that the Metamorphoses is a fundamentally serious poem which is enhanced, or marred, by occasional playfulness. Nor is it argued that the poem is fundamentally playful with occasional moments of dignity and high seriousness. Rather, the approach taken here assumes that seriousness and playfulness are so closely connected in the Metamorphoses that they are in fact the same thing. Four major myths from the Metamorphoses are studied here, from structurally significant points in the poem.