Barbarian variations : Tereus, Procne and Philomela in Ovid (Met. 6.412-674) and Beyond

Abstract

This article offers a detailed examination of Ovid's Tereus, Procne and Philomela épisode (Met. 6.412-674). Our focus on the tale's literary and thematic profile, within its history of reception (from Seneca's Thyestes through Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus to Ransmayr's The Last World). We consider four interrelated features of Ovid's narrative that have attracted the attention of subsequent artists, but have yet to find full acknowledge-ment and appreciation in the scholarly literature : (1) a figuring of hell on earth ; (2) a poetics of perversion ; (3) an aesthetics of vengeance (and metapoetics of literary emulation) ; and (4) an entropy of culture.