Daphne
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| + | [[Image:Apollo and Daphne.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''[[Apollo and Daphne]]'' by [[Antonio Pollaiuolo]], one tale of transformation in [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses]]''—he lusts after her and she escapes him by turning into a [[bay laurel]].]] | ||
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| - | :''[[Metamorphosis (disambiguation)]], [[mythological painting]]'' | ||
| - | The '''''Metamorphoses''''' by the [[Roman poet]] [[Ovid]] is a [[Narrative poetry|narrative poem]] in fifteen books that describes the [[Creation myth|creation]] and [[history]] of the world. Completed in 8 AD, it has remained one of the most popular works of [[mythology]], being the Classical work best known to medieval writers and thus having a great deal of influence on [[medieval poetry]]. | ||
| - | ==Content== | + | According to [[Greek mythology|Greek myth]], [[Apollo]] chased the [[nymph]] '''Daphne''', daughter either of [[Penus]] and [[Creusa]] in [[Thessaly]], or of [[Ladon River|the river Ladon]] in [[Arcadia]]. The pursuit of a local nymph by an [[Twelve Olympians|Olympian god]], part of the archaic adjustment of religious cult in Greece, was given an arch anecdotal turn in [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses]]'', where the god's infatuation was caused by an arrow from [[Eros (god)|Eros]], who wanted to make Apollo pay for making fun of his archery skills and to demonstrate the power of love's arrow. Ovid treats the encounter, Apollo's lapse of majesty, in the mode of elegaic lovers, and expands the pursuit into a series of speeches. Daphne prays for help either to the river god [[Peneus]] or to [[Gaia]], and is transformed into a laurel (''[[Laurus nobilis]]''): "a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left." Most artistic impressions of the myth focus on the moment of transformation. |
| - | Ovid works his way through his subject matter, often in an apparently arbitrary fashion, by jumping from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek myth and sometimes straying in odd directions. The poem is often called a mock-epic. It is written in [[dactylic hexameter]], the form of the great heroic and nationalistic [[epic poem]]s; both those of the ancient tradition (the [[Iliad]] and [[Odyssey]]) and of Ovid's own day (the [[Aeneid]]). It begins with the ritual "invocation of the [[muse]]", and makes use of traditional [[epithet]]s and circumlocutions. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human [[hero]], it leaps from story to story with little connection. | + | |
| - | The recurring theme, as with nearly all of Ovid's work, is that of love — be that personal love or love personified in the figure of ''Amor'' ([[Cupid]]). Indeed, the other [[Roman mythology|Roman gods]] are repeatedly perplexed, humiliated, and made ridiculous by Amor, an otherwise relatively minor god of the [[Pantheon (gods)|pantheon]] who is the closest thing this mock-epic has to a hero. [[Apollo]] comes in for particular ridicule as Ovid shows how irrational love can confound the god of pure [[reason]]. The work as a whole inverts the accepted order, elevating humans and human passions while making the gods and their desires and conquests objects of low humor. | + | A version of the attempt on Daphne's sworn virginity that has been less familiar since the [[Renaissance]] was narrated by the [[Hellenistic]] poet [[Parthenius of Nicaea|Parthenius]], in his ''[[Erotica Pathemata]]'', "The Sorrows of Love". Parthenius' tale was known to [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]], who recounted it in his ''Description of Greece'' (second century CE). In this, Daphne is a mortal girl fond of hunting and determined to remain a virgin; she is pursued by the lad Leucippos, who assumes girl's clothes in order to join her band of huntresses. He is so successful in gaining her innocent affection, that Apollo is jealous and puts it into the girl's mind to stop to bathe in the river Ladon; there, as all strip naked, the ruse is revealed, as in the myth of [[Callisto]], and the huntresses plunge their spears into Leucippos. At this moment Apollo's attention becomes engaged, and he begins his pursuit. |
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| - | ==Main episodes== | + | |
| - | * Book I: [[Greek_mythology#Cosmogony_and_cosmology|Cosmogony]], [[Ages of Man]], [[Gigantes]], [[Daphne]], [[Io (mythology)|Io]]; | + | |
| - | * Book II: [[Phaëton]], [[Callisto (mythology)|Callisto]], [[Jupiter (mythology)|Jupiter]] and [[Europa (mythology)|Europa]]; | + | |
| - | * Book III: [[Cadmus]], [[Actaeon]], [[Echo (mythology)|Echo]] et [[Pentheus]]; | + | |
| - | * Book IV: [[Pyramus and Thisbe]], [[Perseus]] and [[Andromeda (mythology)|Andromeda]]. | + | |
| - | * Book V: [[Phineas]], the [[Proserpina|Rape of Proserpina]]; | + | |
| - | * Book VI: [[Arachne]], [[Niobe]], [[Philomela (princess of Athens)|Philomela]] and [[Procne]]; | + | |
| - | * Book VII: [[Medea]], [[Cephalus]] and [[Procris]]; | + | |
| - | * Book VIII: [[Nisos]] and [[Scylla (princess)|Scylla]], [[Daedalus]] and [[Icarus]], [[Baucis and Philemon]]; | + | |
| - | * Book IX: [[Heracles]], [[Byblis]]; | + | |
| - | * Book X: [[Eurydice]], [[Hyacinth (mythology)|Hyacinth]], [[Pygmalion (mythology)|Pygmalion]], [[Adonis]], [[Atalanta]], [[Cyparissus]]; | + | |
| - | * Book XI: [[Orpheus]], [[Midas]], [[Alcyone]] and [[Ceyx]]; | + | |
| - | * Book XII: [[Iphigeneia]], [[Centaur]]s, [[Achilles]]; | + | |
| - | * Book XIII: the [[Trojan_War#The_sack_of_Troy|Sack of Troy]], [[Aeneas]]; | + | |
| - | * Book XIV: [[Scylla]], Aeneas, [[Romulus]]; | + | |
| - | * Book XV: [[Pythagoras]], [[Hippolytus (mythology)|Hippolytus]], [[Aesculapius]], [[Julius Caesar|Caesar]]. | + | |
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| - | ==Inspirations and adaptations== | + | |
| - | The story of [[Coronis and Phoebus Apollo]] was adapted by [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] in the [[Canterbury Tales]], where it forms the basis for the Manciple's tale. | + | |
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| - | The Metamorphoses was a considerable influence on English playwright [[William Shakespeare]]. Shakespeare's ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' is a clear adaptation of the story of [[Pyramus and Thisbe]] (Metamorphoses Book 4), and, in ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'', a band of amateur actors performs a play about Pyramus and Thisbe. In [[Titus Andronicus]] the story of Lavinia's rape is drawn from [[Tereus]]' rape of [[Philomela]], and the text of Metamorphoses is used within the play to enable Titus to interpret his daughter's story. Yet, most tellingly, Shakespeare adapts, with minor changes, a passage from Book 7 of the Golding translation into an important speech in Act V of the [[Tempest]]. | + | |
| - | *In 1613, Spanish poet [[Luis de Góngora]] wrote an illustrious poem titled [[La Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea]] that retells the story of Polyphemus, Galatea and Acis found in Book XIII of the Metamorphoses. | + | |
| - | *In 1625, sculptor [[Gian Lorenzo Bernini]] finished his piece entitled [[Apollo and Daphne (Bernini)|Apollo and Daphne]], taken from the episode in Book 1 in which [[Apollo]], pierced by a love-inducing arrow from [[Cupid]], pursues the fleeing nymph [[Daphne]]. This episode furthermore has been treated repeatedly in opera, notably by [[Jacopo Peri]] (''[[Dafne]]'') in 1597 and [[Richard Strauss]] (''[[Daphne (opera)|Daphne]]'', with a libretto that deviates significantly from Ovid's account) in 1938. | + | |
| - | *In 1783, Austrian composer [[Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf]] wrote twelve symphonies on selected stories of the Metamorphoses; only six survive, corresponding to stories from the first six books. | + | |
| - | *In 1951, British composer [[Benjamin Britten]] wrote a [[Six Metamorphoses after Ovid|piece]] for solo [[Oboe]] incorporating six of Ovid's mythical characters. | + | |
| - | *In 1988, Author [[Christoph Ransmayr]] reworked a great number of characters from The Metamorphoses in his [[The Last World]]. | + | |
| - | *In 2002, Author [[Mary Zimmerman]] adapted some of Ovid's myths into a play by the same title, and the open-air-theatre group London Bubble also adapted it in 2006. | + | |
| - | *[[Naomi Iizuka]]'s ''[[Polaroid Stories]]'' also bases its format on Metamorphoses, setting the classic play in a modern time with drug-addicted, teenage versions of many of the characters from the original play. | + | |
| - | *[[Acis and Galatea]], a [[masque]] by [[Händel]], is based on the [[eponymous]] characters out of the Metamorphoses, as is [[Jean-Baptiste Lully|Lully]]'s opera [[Acis et Galatée]]. | + | |
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| - | ==Manuscript tradition== | + | |
| - | Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' was an immediate success (although [[Quintilian]] considered Ovid's tragedy ''Medea'' his best work), its popularity threatening that of [[Virgil]]'s [[Aeneid]]. So definitive a work on mythology was it considered that [[Seneca the Younger|Seneca]] joked in his [[Apocolocyntosis]] that the [[deification]] of [[Claudius]] should be added to the Metamorphoses. But the poem's immense popularity in antiquity and the Middle Ages belies the struggle for survival it faced in late antiquity. Considered by Christians a dangerously pagan work, the ''Metamorphoses'' was fortunate to survive [[Christianization]], and the vitriolic voices of [[Augustine]] and [[Jerome]], who believed the only metamorphosis worth reading about was the [[transubstantiation]]. Indeed an extremely concise, "inoffensive" prose summary of the poem ("a metamorphosis-free ''Metamorphoses''") manufactured in late antiquity for Christian readers threatened to eclipse the poem itself. Though the ''Metamorphoses'' did not suffer the ignominious fate of the ''Medea'', and survived, no ancient [[scholia]] on the poem survive (although they did exist in antiquity), and the earliest manuscript is very late, dating from the 11th century. | + | |
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| - | Collaborative editorial effort has been investigating the various manuscripts of ''Metamorphoses'', some forty-five complete texts or substantial fragments,, all deriving from a Gallic archetype, with the result of several centuries of critical reading is that the poet's meaning is firmly established on the basis of the manuscript tradition or restored by conjecture where the tradition is deficient. The modern critical editions are two: W. S. Anderson's, first published in 1977 in the Teubner series, and R. J. Tarrant's, published in 2004 by the Oxford Clarendon Press. | + | |
| - | ==See also== | + | |
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| - | * [[List of characters in Metamorphoses]] | + | |
| - | * [[Tales from Ovid]] - [[Ted Hughes]]' poetical work | + | |
| + | A famous rendition of the subject is [[Apollo and Daphne (Bernini)|Gian Lorenzo Bernini's ''Apollo and Daphne'']]. In music, the German composer [[Richard Strauss]] composed a one-act [[Daphne (opera)|opera]] about the legend based on accounts by both Ovid and [[Euripides]]. | ||
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According to Greek myth, Apollo chased the nymph Daphne, daughter either of Penus and Creusa in Thessaly, or of the river Ladon in Arcadia. The pursuit of a local nymph by an Olympian god, part of the archaic adjustment of religious cult in Greece, was given an arch anecdotal turn in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where the god's infatuation was caused by an arrow from Eros, who wanted to make Apollo pay for making fun of his archery skills and to demonstrate the power of love's arrow. Ovid treats the encounter, Apollo's lapse of majesty, in the mode of elegaic lovers, and expands the pursuit into a series of speeches. Daphne prays for help either to the river god Peneus or to Gaia, and is transformed into a laurel (Laurus nobilis): "a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left." Most artistic impressions of the myth focus on the moment of transformation.
A version of the attempt on Daphne's sworn virginity that has been less familiar since the Renaissance was narrated by the Hellenistic poet Parthenius, in his Erotica Pathemata, "The Sorrows of Love". Parthenius' tale was known to Pausanias, who recounted it in his Description of Greece (second century CE). In this, Daphne is a mortal girl fond of hunting and determined to remain a virgin; she is pursued by the lad Leucippos, who assumes girl's clothes in order to join her band of huntresses. He is so successful in gaining her innocent affection, that Apollo is jealous and puts it into the girl's mind to stop to bathe in the river Ladon; there, as all strip naked, the ruse is revealed, as in the myth of Callisto, and the huntresses plunge their spears into Leucippos. At this moment Apollo's attention becomes engaged, and he begins his pursuit.
A famous rendition of the subject is Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Apollo and Daphne. In music, the German composer Richard Strauss composed a one-act opera about the legend based on accounts by both Ovid and Euripides.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Daphne" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
