READING RESISTANCE IN THE GALATEA EPISODE OF OVID’S METAMORPHOSES

Abstract

This paper discusses the wooing speech of Polyphemus (re-told by Galatea) and proposes that both Polyphemus and Galatea are readers of Ovid’s poem and of Latin Elegy, yet very different ones. While the Cyclops reads the text of Metamorphoses and the elegiac figure of the dura puella from a male-centered perspective, the goddess, resists this type of reading. I argue that Galatea rejects the construction of herself that the Cyclops shapes and that in this way she also resists the way the oaf reads images of women displayed throughout Metamorphoses and in Latin love elegy, thus becoming a resisting reader of male-biased readings of Ovid’s epic and amatory poetry. Further, three contentions are made, that Galatea rejects the reification of women in their animalization and assimilation to eroticized landscape, that she also rejects the literary stereotype of the dura puella in which the Cyclops’ speech tries to encase her, and that she realizes that the Cyclops wishes to deprive her of her own nature and identity and to assimilate her completely to his own world.