Philip Hardie, Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2002), x + 365pp., 12 b&w illustrations, ISBN
052180087
In the last few years there has been a resurgence of interest in Ovid
sparked by Ted Hughes’ Tales from Ovid (1997) and evidenced by the
continuing fascination with Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, which draws
heavily on Ovids story of Tereus and Procne. Philip Hardie’s book,
Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion, is a major new study which touches on the
whole of Ovid’s work, from the Amores to the poetry written during his
exile. Hardie presents Ovid as ‘the most slippery of writers’ and focuses
on the duplicity which he sees as the central characteristic of his work,
particularly in the Metamorphoses. Not only are there shifts of meaning
within the words of the Latin text but Ovid’s characters, and the stories
themselves, are capable of constant reinterpretation to suit the
preoccupations of the time.
Hardie’s book explores the ways in which the poet works on the
reader’s imagination to conjure characters and events which seem to
possess a vivid life of their own. In his introductory chapter, Hardie says
that the emphasis of his book is on this illusion of presence rather than
‘fictionality’ and he considers how Ovid creates this sense of presence
through desire: ‘Illusions of presence are fuelled by the desire of the
lover, the desire of the mourner ... as well as by the desire which works of
art and texts stimulate in their viewers and readers’. He develops his ideas
with detailed readings of Ovidian texts supported by critical responses
selected from writers and artists who, as he admits, have held Ovid in
high regard. Hardie ranges across different centuries and a variety of
disciplines, from poetics and rhetoric to philosophy, religion, art and
politics. He also revisits some of the more familiar stories of
transformation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses including Narcissus, Apollo
and Daphne and Pygmalion. The concluding chapter of Hardie’s book
deals with the continuing influence of Ovid on the modern novel.
The Renaissance was particularly alive to the conceits, selfconsciousness and ironic wit in Ovid’s work. Renaissance literary
scholars will find much to interest them in Hardie’s critical analysis of the
reception of Ovid’s poetry during this period. Petrarch has often been
claimed to mark the beginning of a Renaissance and Hardie examines the
influence of Ovid in the Rime Sparse with the endlessly repeated absent
presence of Laura. He looks at Ovidian illusionism in the use of the
Pygmalion story in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Shakespeare’s
engagement with time and fame in the Sonnets. There is also an analysis
of Ben Jonson’s play Poetaster, with its dramatised literary and personal
criticism of Ovid.
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Hardie’s Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion covers a wide field and, as the
author comments, is ‘just one snapshot in the album of the reception of
his works over the last two millennia’. However, Hardie brings fresh
insights into the work of a classical writer whose influence has permeated
much of our literary heritage and continues to be a source of inspiration
today.
Ann Tollett
University of Warwick
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