Metamorphoses

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Writing Metamorphosis”

In this activity, students will use their critical and creative thinking skills to write a short account of an Ovidian metamorphosis.

Ovid uses a distinctive style in his diverse poem to explore the unifying theme of metamorphosis. In this activity, you will write your own short account of a metamorphosis that mimics Ovid’s style. You can use any source for your story (or you can make it up), but you should take the following into consideration:

• What kind of metamorphosis are you describing? Is it physical, emotional, or both?
• Who are the characters in your story? What are their motivations, strengths, and weaknesses?
• What is the crisis that brings about the metamorphosis? Does the metamorphosis solve the crisis or make it worse?

After completing this activity, students can turn their stories in to the instructor or present them in front of the class. This activity should spark class discussion on the different types of metamorphoses that Ovid explores in his poem.

Teaching Suggestion: Students may wish to revisit their definitions of “metamorphosis” from the Personal Connection Prompt and/or reflect on the significance of Ovid’s theme Boundaries and Fluidity with this Activity. Before starting students on this assignment, you might take some time to discuss the hallmarks of Ovid’s style, including his wit, his love of wordplay and soundplay, his allusiveness, and his penchant for squeezing a lot of narrative into tight spaces. You might also discuss some of the major symbols and motifs that recur in the poem, including punishment, betrayal, and speech.

Differentiation Suggestion: To encourage students with an interest in performance or the performing arts, consider allowing them to act out an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses for the class rather than composing their own account of a metamorphosis. Students may also wish to perform their own creations. Visual learners, technologically inclined students, and those who wish to strengthen their graphic design skills might benefit from telling their stories in the form of a video, comic strip, or similar medium.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Gender is an important theme throughout the poem, with many mortal and immortal women suffering because of male figures.

• What is the role of gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses? (topic sentence)
• Discuss at least two examples of how women and gender are depicted in the poem and discuss the relationship between these examples and power.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, reflect on the significance of how women in Metamorphoses sometimes manage to regain their agency in light of the text’s larger theme of Sexual Violence and Power.

2. Ovid’s Metamorphoses contains hundreds of stories, including many that are embedded within other stories through the use of framing devices.

• What is the purpose of Ovid’s use of framing devices in Metamorphoses? (topic sentence)
• Pick one example of an embedded narrative and explore the role of framing devices within the poem more broadly.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, reflect on the connection between Ovid’s use of framing devices and the theme(s) of Boundaries and Fluidity and/or Myth, History, and Empire.

3. Most of the stories in the Metamorphoses feature some kind of metamorphosis or transformation.

• How does metamorphosis function in the poem? (topic sentence)
• Choose one story from the poem and discuss how metamorphosis functions within it, making sure to discuss the circumstances and the results of the metamorphosis.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, evaluate the positive and negative aspects of metamorphosis.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Ovid’s Metamorphoses often reflects on different forms of art, including written, visual, and auditory arts. Pick one art form that appears in the poem and discuss its role throughout. In what stories does this art form make an appearance? What characters or gods are associated with it? What is Ovid trying to say about this art form?

2. In the opening lines of the Metamorphoses, Ovid asserts that he will compose “one continuous song from nature’s first / Remote beginnings to our modern times” (1). Perform a close reading of these lines in the context of the whole poem. What does Ovid mean by “one continuous song”? Does he achieve this goal? How do the ideas of time, myth, and history intersect in Metamorphoses?

3. Ovid often represents metamorphosis as a form of boundary-crossing. What kinds of boundaries are crossed in Ovid’s Metamorphoses? Focusing on one story or a group of stories, identify one kind of boundary that is crossed in the poem. How does Ovid define this boundary? How and why is it crossed? What is the purpose that is served by crossing this boundary?

Multiple Choice and Long Answer Questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, exams, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. Why does Daphne turn into a laurel tree?

A) To anger Amor

B) To flee the advances of Apollo

C) To please Apollo

D) To escape the flood

2. Why does Jupiter turn Io into a cow?

A) To hide her from Juno

B) To make her more edible

C) To punish her for being unfaithful

D) To prevent her from being raped

3. What form does Jupiter take to seduce Europa?

A) A swan

B) A bull

C) A satyr

D) A man

4. Why does Diana turn Actaeon into a stag?

A) Because he did not sacrifice to her

B) Because he raped one of her handmaids

C) Because he insulted her mother

D) Because he saw her bathing naked

5. How do the daughters of Minyas anger Bacchus?

A) By making fun of his mother

B) By boasting that they were more powerful than him

C) By trying to kidnap him

D) By refusing to worship him

6. Which of these stories features a god punishing a mortal for their pride?

A) The story of Baucis and Philemon

B) The story of Alcyone and Ceyx

C) The story of Minerva and Arachne

D) The story of Ulysses and Ajax

7. How does Cephalus demonstrate his devotion to Procris?

A) By rejecting the goddess Dawn

B) By castrating himself

C) By trusting Procris unconditionally

D) By only having male lovers

8. How does Theseus demonstrate faithlessness?

A) By killing the Minotaur

B) By leaving the tributes to die in the Labyrinth

C) By imprisoning Daedalus

D) By abandoning Ariadne

9. Which of the following is an example of a happy couple?

A) Tereus and Procne

B) Philemon and Baucis

C) Cephalus and Procris

D) Zeus and Semele

10. In which of the following stories is a non-human metamorphosed into a human?

A) Niobe

B) Hermaphroditus

C) Pygmalion

D) Daphne

11. Which of the following figures kills themselves because their beloved dies?

A) Alcyone

B) Aesacus

C) Pygmalion

D) Both A and B

12. Where does Aeneas go after fleeing Troy?

A) Italy

B) Greece

C) Egypt

D) China

13. Why does Polyphemus kill Acis?

A) Because he is jealous of Galatea’s love for him

B) Because he made a mistake

C) Because he stole his flute

D) Because he helped Ulysses

14. What happens to Aeneas after he drowns?

A) He is brought back to life.

B) He turns into a river.

C) He becomes a god.

D) He is thrown into Tartarus.

15. What will make Ovid’s name eternal?

A) His wealth

B) His poetry

C) His patronage of Augustus

D) His praise of the gods

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. Who is Phaethon? How do his actions nearly cause the destruction of the cosmos?

2. Who is Pythagoras? How do his teachings reflect the central themes and motifs of the Metamorphoses?