The Shade of Orpheus: Ambiguity and the Poetics of Vmbra in Metamorphoses 10

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Celia M. Campbell, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2019
• Publisher: OpenEdition Journals
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: OpenEdition Journals
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): https://doi.org/10.4000/dictynna.1814
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Dictynna: revue de poetique latine
• Volume: 16
• Start Page: 1
• End Page: 22
• Keywords: Metamorphoses; intertextuality; grove; locus amoenus; Ovid; underworld; shade; umbra; Orpheus
• Research Categories: Language, Ancient; History, Ancient

Abstract

This paper reexamines the grove of Orpheus in Ovid, Metamorphoses 10, arguing that it is a space of complex ambiguity as activated and determined by the dual meaning of umbra. It conceptualizes the space as an atmospheric doublet of the Underworld, designed to give Orpheus imaginative access to his lost wife Eurydice by providing a second set of shade(s) as an audience for his song. By calling attention to the ways in which Orpheus’ summoning of the grove casts it as a neo-Underworld, this paper seeks to unsettle the grove’s persistent designation as the originary locus amoenus. Altogether, across the levels of narrative, Orpheus and Ovid engage in a receptive repurposing and manipulation of both the idea of literary shade (as inherited and adapted from Virgil) and the trope of the tree catalogue (as familiarised in epic) to create a landscape of profound liminality.