EXILE – AFTER OVID
EXILE – AFTER OVID

EXILE – AFTER OVID

Summary/Abstract: This paper re-examines three Metamorphoses tales to argue the crucial importance of factoringin the en-gendering (in Teresa de Lauretis’s terms) of the banished figure not just as the criminal deservedlypunished for their hubris – so that exile translates a spatial (re)configuration of nemesis – but especially asthe subaltern other already deemed expendable and thereby chosen as the exemplar of audacity worthgiving a lesson to. My exilic examples, which I also contrast in gender terms, are Marsyas, Echo andArachne. In all three cases, “exile” metaphorises a “not-that” or “not-oneself” as “not-here,” anontological transmutation reconfigured spatially, so that exile from oneself looks like exile from one’scountry. My overall argument unravels unthought-of aspects of exile in the Metamorphoses; however, thethree tales echo artistically not only Greek mythography but also the condition of individuals in the ancientpolity, on the one hand, and seem to furnish a template for future social developments regarding both genderand the subaltern other, on the other.

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