User:Dante478/sandbox

Proposed edits to Wikipedia's Metamorphoses article for Your Class

 * 1) Find citations that may need editing.
 * 2) Add additional information to original Wikipedia.
 * 3) Find additional genres for Metamorphoses

Reading List
A numbered list of all your readings go here. Use the following format:


 * 1) Ovid . Wikipedia
 * 2) Metamorphoses. Wikipedia
 * 3) Ovid. (43 B.C.E.-17 C.E.). Metamophoses
 * 4) Ovid's Metamorphoses, A Reader's Guide.  (2011).  Metamorphoses
 * 5) Ovid. (1988). Sara Mack
 * 6) Classics of World Literature Series  (1998).  Ovid
 * 7) Who's Who in Classical Mythology. (1990).  Adrian Room
 * 8) The Gods of Olympus.  (2014).  Barbara Graziosi
 * 9) The Encyclopedia of Mythology.  (1993).  Eric Flaum/David Pandy

Original
The poem has been considered as an epic or a type of epic (for example, an anti-epic or mock-epic); a Kollektivgedicht that pulls together a series of examples in miniature form, such as the epyllion; a sampling of one genre after another; or a narrative that refuses categorization.

Revised
Metamorphoses has a genre of Speculative Poetry due to its mythological themes regarding the creation of life. It also fits in the category of Wisdom Poetry. Wisdom Poetry are written by scholars, Ovid was scholar. Poems in that genre have no exact date of its time of being worked on or the creator has not been discovered. The completion date of Metamorphoses is not accurately determined. Wisdom Poetry also has a moral lesson in it. Metamorphoses is based on the creation of the universe and how Phoebe, sister of Apollo, viewed love. Speculative Poetry focuses on fantasy, science, and mythology. Since Metamorphoses puts emphases on how the vitals of life were created, Speculative Poetry fits well with it. "Some god (or kinder nature) settled this dispute by separating earth from heaven, and then by separating sea from earth and fluid aether from the denser air; and after these were separated out and liberated from the primal heap, he bound the disentangled elements each in its place and all in harmony." Since it has not been listed of who the god involved in the creations, it is considered speculation in terms of myth.

Original Contribution
Though the genre of Metamorphoses has long been debated and to many scholars, undecided; then listed as a mock epic, I have found that the two additional genres of Speculative Poetry and Wisdom Poetry also fit Metamorphoses.

I have found two lines in the beginning of Metamorphoses that supports my statement.

"Before the seas and lands had been created, before the sky that covers everything, Nature displayed a single aspect only throughout the cosmos; Chaos was its name."

"The sun as yet did not light up the earth, nor did the crescent moon renew her horns, nor was the earth suspended in midair, balanced by her own weight, nor did the ocean extend her arms to the margins of the land."

Ovid wrote a very thorough and descriptive story on how the earth was created, but during that time if land to journey upon was not yet created, it sounds almost impossible for him to record his viewings of the gods that created life on earth. According to Ovid, Earth was just an unstable piece of land before the gods worked on it. If so, then Ovid would not have been able to stabilize his time spent before the gods game. Those statements further support the statement of Metamorphoses fitting into the genres of Speculative and Wisdom Poetry.

Nikolaas Heinsius is one of the scholars who has researched Metamorphoses. Though Nicolaus researched Metamorphoses in the 1600's, there was a group composed of 20 members named after him that did extensive research in the 2000s. The group consists of members with a college education in Humanity and Philosophy.