Ovid on myth

Ovid’s Metamorphoses was the book from which centuries of European culture drew their knowledge of Greek and Roman myth, and until the beginning of mythological studies in the eighteenth century, under the influence of the ethnographical discoveries and missionaries' reports, this work determined what myth had to be: fantastic stories about gods and heroes - or, as an early and sharp-tongued critic, Bernard de Fontenelle (1657-1757), described myth, 'un amas de chimères, de rêveries et d'absurdités'. From our own understanding of myth, as shaped by the generations of scholars since the mid-eighteenth century, this has not always surprised and puzzled as much as it should have done: the deep seriousness of our own concept of what myths are - 'a traditional tale … held to be not a passing enjoyment, but something important, serious, even sacred', 'traditional tales with immediate cultural relevance' - seems to clash violently with Ovid’s irreverent playfulness, as he most often is perceived. And although there is no doubt that the modern understanding of myth as something profound is a reaction to the earlier, less ‘deep’, way of thinking about myth as shaped by Ovid, it is by no means certain that playfulness and irreverence is all that there is to be said about Ovid’s mythical narratives.