Some of the oldest examples of Greek literature are the Homeric Hymns,
a collection of thirty-three anonymous works praising individual gods
and goddesses.
For many years, scholars believed that in writing about the goddess Persephone, Ovid used an intermediate literary source rather than directly referencing The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the mother of Persephone. Professor Stephen Hinds challenges this argument in his book The Metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the Self-Conscious Muse.
Professor Hinds’ intensive study of Ovid’s two works on Persephone, in his masterpiece, the Metamorphoses, and in his elegiac poem, the Fasti, along with The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, explores the similarities and differences in the three versions of the ancient myth. Through this intensive scrutiny, the characters of both Persephone and Demeter are brought into high relief and the narrative, including the accounts of Persephone’s abduction and her reunion with her mother, is broadened. Hinds also considers the poet’s creative process and postulates that Ovid wrote the Metamorphoses and the Fasti concurrently, playing back and forth between the two stories. |
