METAMORPHOSES OF MYTHOLOGICAL
EDUCATION: OVID AND HIS METAMORPHOSES
AS SUBJECTS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION
IN GERMANY
1. Recent Reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the
Anniversary Celebrations of 2017: Enthusiasm and Barriers
In the year 2017, the (supposed) bimillennium of Ovid’s death in Tomi, near the Black Sea, was celebrated worldwide with a bulk of scholarly activity, books, articles and congresses for the academic community, creative events and even competitions for high school students and pupils, for example, Celebremus Ovidium 2017, organized and sponsored by the Arbeitskreis Hu- manistisches Gymnasium in Munich, Bavaria. A short drama entitled Ovid – Ein Meister der Verwandlung, written and staged by students from the Gym- nasium Selb, won the first prize.1 In an editorial of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the author Heike Schmoll praised Ovid with reference to Hans Blumenberg as the main source of inspiration for Euro- pean imaginative fantasy in general.2 This enthusiastic appreciation in high culture as well as in arts, sciences, and popular culture, in which Ovid has become the most influential ancient inspiration for contemporary mytho- poetic works for children and young adults,3 is in a certain contrast to the
1 See “Celebremus Ovidium”, Arbeitskreis Humanistisches Gymnasium, https://www.klas- sische-bildung.de/celebremus-ovidium (accessed 16 September 2018).
2 Heike Schmoll, “Nicht ohne Ovid”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 January 2017, 1.
3 See esp. Markus Janka and Michael Stierstorfer, “Von Arkadien über New York ins Lab- yrinth des Minotaurus: Mythologische Orte in Ovids Metamorphosen und aktueller Kinder- und Jugendliteratur”, Gymnasium 122 (2015), 1–44, available at Academia, https://www.academia.
edu/31052296/Von_Arkadien_%C3%BCber_New_York_ins_Labyrinth_des_Minotaurus_Mytholo- gische_Orte_in_Ovids_Metamorphosen_und_aktueller_Kinder-_und_Jugendliteratur.pdf (accessed 22 May 2020); Markus Janka and Michael Stierstorfer, eds., Verjüngte Antike. Griechisch-römische Mythologie und Historie in zeitgenössischen Kinder- und Jugendmedien, Studien zur europäischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur 5, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017 (with further references and discussions).
everyday routine in German grammar schools (gymnasia). Between the age of fifteen and eighteen, that is, from the tenth to the twelfth/thirteenth year of their school career, gymnasium students in German-speaking countries experience Ovid’s main work, the Metamorphoses, and to some extent also parts of his amatory and exilic poetry. Despite various didactic innovations and creative multimedia impulses, the main focus of teaching Ovid is still on the so-called stataric, that is, precise and meticulous, translation of the original Latin verses into “adequate” German texts.
This approach constitutes the main problem for today’s adolescents, who tend to have remarkable (and understandable) difficulties in decipher- ing and reconstructing Ovid’s artful “Callimachean” poetry, full of innovation, learned allusions, innuendos, and subtle humour. The gap between high public esteem and creative appeal on the one hand and lack of learners’
motivation – caused by linguistic and hermeneutic barriers – on the other turns out to be a challenge for Ovidian scholars and Ovidian didactics. This paper starts with a brief diachronic survey of the history of affection towards Ovid’s opus as the core of mythological education. The central part of this contribution examines the main trends and tendencies in Ovid-based myth- ological didactics and high school (gymnasium) education in German-speak- ing countries from the nineteenth century onwards.
2. Brief Historical Survey of Ovidian Didactics
from Antiquity to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century
The contemporary concept of mythological education through exemplary translation and interpretation of Ovid’s fundamental works is rooted in a long and noble, though diversified, tradition of appreciation of the “lascivious”
author and his polymorphic poetry in didactic contexts. In this part of the chapter, a rough sketch of the most important lines of development gives some hints on the most influential trends.
The first aetas Ovidiana lasts until about 150 years after the physical death of the author. Similarly to Virgil’s canonical works, Ovid’s poetry is quasi- omnipresent in the thematic invention and linguistic articulation of writers and orators. The rich imitatio (above all by poets whose versification broadly follows Ovidian traits) defies ambivalent judgements (iudicia), as represent- ed, for example, by Quintilian. The classicism of the middle and later Roman Empire led to a reduction of the canon of school authors: whereas Virgil,
Terence, and Cicero remained untouched, Ovid’s significance decreased. He was now treated more as a “mythological treasure trove” (mythologische Fundgrube) than as a linguistic and poetic “model” (Sprachmodell).4
From the end of the fifth century CE onwards, the canon of Latin school authors was again extended: Horace and Statius were included in the cir- cle of poets read and interpreted in educational institutions. Ovid’s works, however, served rather as a sourcebook for grammarians (like Priscian) and mythographers (like Fulgentius). In the early Middle Ages, renewed interest in Ovid resulted in numerous commentaries on Ovid as “a founder and inventor of myths” (Mythenstifter), whose poetic works were obviously eagerly read and interpreted as part of secondary education.5 This trend was strongly confirmed through the ages and led to the second aetas Ovidiana in the high Middle Ages, when Ovid’s oeuvre as a whole (now commented on even more) functioned as a kind of encyclopaedic didacticum.6 This affec- tionate appraisal of Ovidian language, ideas, and humour is documented, for example, by the influential Poetria nova written in Latin hexameters by the Anglo-Norman rhetorician Geoffrey of Vinsauf (around 1200).7 This didactic poem, Ovidian in style and content, is considered “the most influential of all the medieval artes poetriae”.8
The rich and complex didactic tradition9 noticeable, for instance, in France, was intensified even more by the trend of moralizing Ovidian
4 Pierluigi Leone Gatti, Ovid in Antike und Mittelalter. Geschichte der philologischen Rezeption, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014, 63.
5 Ibidem, 165.
6 Cf. esp. Ralph Hexter, “Sex Education: Ovidian Erotodidactic in the Classroom”, in Roy Gib- son, Steven Green, and Alison Sharrock, eds., The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria” and “Remedia Amoris”, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 298–317, with thorough discussion and bibliography. See ibidem, 301–302: “Ovid’s Ars Amatoria achieves a variety of di- dactic purposes in medieval classrooms, but rarely if ever is the aim of educators to provide their pupils instruction in loving (which is not to say that pupils didn’t learn a thing or two from their study of the poem magistro nolente)”.
7 For this text and its particularly close intertextual relationship with Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Metamorphoses, see Markus Janka, “Die ‘Poetria nova’ des Galfrid von Vinsauf: Eine mittelalterliche Regelrhetorik in der Tradition des antiken Lehrgedichts”, in Wolfgang Kofler and Karlheinz Töchter- le, eds., Pontes III. Die antike Rhetorik in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte, Innsbruck, Wien, München, and Bozen: Studien-Verlag, 2005, 175–190 (with further references).
8 Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter in the abstract of their Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric:
Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, avail- able at Oxford Scholarship Online, http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:os- obl/9780199653782.001.0001/acprof-9780199653782-chapter-36 (accessed 25 June 2020).
9 Hexter, “Sex Education”, 306: “By the 12th century, masters were happily introducing their students to virtually the full range of Ovid’s œuvre”. Wilfried Stroh, Ovid im Urteil der
lusus, as in the French Ovide moralisé, which is developed further in the Latin Ovidius moralizatus by Pierre Bersuire/Petrus Berchorius (around 1317–1328); there is a steady and productive output of school commentar- ies and collections of introductions to Ovid’s works throughout the centuries, continuing “unabated into the 16th century and even beyond”.10
The classicism of Renaissance humanists reached the German-speaking regions relatively late. The curricula were not particularly fond of mytholog- ical learning based on Ovidian lascivia.11 In the decades before Martin Lu- ther’s reformation, Jakob Wimpfeling (1450–1528), for example, advocated a classical canon of Latin school literature, yet he excluded not only Ovid, but also Horace’s Odes and all satires as morally damaging to juveniles.12
In the reformatory humanistic Latin school planned and established by Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), the praeceptor Germaniae of the sixteenth century, there were three classes. On the highest level, reading of Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid was compulsory. The anti-pagan zeal of John Amos Comenius (1592–1670) censured the canon and led to a temporary exclusion of poets of love, sex, and humour, such as Catullus, Ovid, and Martial ‒ which did not turn out to be long-lived. The philanthropist Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744–1811) considers the reading of Ovid’s works clearly less important than the “general knowledge” conveyed by the natural milieu of the country house used by schools (Landschulheim), but nevertheless allows five hours of education in Latin a week.13
Nachwelt. Eine Testimoniensammlung, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969, 1–2, regards the era from the twelfth up to the seventeenth century as the “Periode seiner [Ovids]
mächtigsten Wirkung” (period of his [Ovid’s] most powerful influence). Unless stated otherwise, all translations are our own.
10 Hexter, “Sex Education”, 310. See also p. 317: “It is in some sense remarkable that the Ars Amatoria hung on as long as it did, whether in 14th- and 15th-century Italy or early 16th-century England. Then as now, masters ‒ joined soon by printers ‒ had enormous power to direct young minds to look to Ovid’s Latinity, his mythological learning, his rhetorical craft”.
11 Ulrich Schmitzer, “Examen in Liebe mit Note 1. Übersetzungen von Ovids Ars amatoria vom 15. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert”, Gymnasium 125 (2018), 459, n. 109, points out that it has yet to be proved “[o]b die Ars amatoria zwischen dem 16. und dem frühen 20. Jahrhundert überhaupt jemals in der Schule gelesen wurde” (whether the Ars amatoria was ever read in [German] schools between the sixteenth and the early twentieth centuries).
12 Manfred Fuhrmann, Latein und Europa. Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts in Deutschland von Karl dem Großen bis Wilhelm II., Köln: DuMont, 2001, 37.
13 Ibidem, 107.
3. Mythological Education from the Nineteenth to the
Twenty-First Century: Ovid’s Metamorphoses in German-
Speaking Gymnasium Curricula as an Exemplary Case
The Latin curriculum of the so-called new humanistic gymnasium of the nineteenth century, designed according to the concept of Wilhelm von Hum- boldt (1767–1835) and extremely influential in German-speaking countries, follows, for example, the didactic handbook by Friedrich August Eckstein (1810–1885). He is a severe censor of ancient literature of any genre, be it prose or poetry, based on stylistic and moral criteria. Ovid’s Metamorpho- ses are a fundamental read in the Tertia class (the equivalent of contempo- rary Grades 8 and 9, with students aged from thirteen to fifteen)14 as a pro- paedeutic subject of instruction, preparing for the reading and interpretation of Virgil’s Aeneid (in Secunda) and Horace’s lyric poems (in Prima); Catullus, the elegiac, and comic poets are sacrificed due to the prudishness of the century (because of the meretrices).
The didactic preferences of the Wilhelminian era (1871–1918) in Prussia and beyond follow the paths of the new humanistic Humboldtian tradition and are represented paradigmatically by Peter Dettweiler (1856–1907):
he stresses the particular value of an extensive reading and interpreting of Ovid’s works in both years of the Tertia stage. In particular, he emphasizes the educational value of mythological knowledge, aesthetic sensitivity, and propaedeutic skills useful for the subsequent reading of Virgil and Horace.
This multifunctional approach has proven to be extremely successful in di- dactic reflections on mythical education based on Ovidian texts until today.15 Dettweiler recommends the following anthology for educational purposes:
1. 530 verses in Untertertia (Grade 8, thirteen- to fourteen-year-olds):
Daedalus and Icarus, Philemon and Baucis, Midas, Lycian farmers and Latona, Orpheus and Eurydice, Perseus and Andromeda;
2. 900 verses in Obertertia (Grade 9, fourteen- to fifteen-year-olds): the Flood/Deucalion and Pyrrha, founding of Thebes by Cadmus, Phaethon,
14 For the structure of German gymnasia schooling in the nineteenth century, see Table 1 in Appendix 1 of this chapter.
15 See Hans Jürgen Apel and Stefan Bittner, Humanistische Schulbildung 1890–1945. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der altertumskundlichen Unterrichtsfächer, Köln: Böhlau, 1994, 125–126; Peter Dettweiler, Didaktik und Methodik des lateinischen Unterrichts, 3rd rev. ed., ed. Wilhelm Fries, München: Beck, 1914 (ed. pr. 1895), 126.
Niobe, creation out of Chaos and the Four Ages,16 Caesar’s apotheosis;
in addition, according to the “vigour and ability of the students” (Kraft der Schüler), some elegiac poems (Amores and Heroides) as well as the Tristia.
During the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), Ovid’s opus remained a sta- ble, though often “eher etüdenartige Einleitung der Dichterlektüre” (a rather étude-like introduction to the reading of Latin poets);17 however, there are also fresh approaches to the thematic interpretation of Ovidian texts with a strong emphasis on historical learning. A school edition compiled by Anton Kurfess in 1930 and entitled Kaiser Augustus und seine Zeit. Quellen zum Leben des Augustus und zum Verständnis des augusteischen Zeitalters18 of- fers the following anthology compiled from Ovid’s works: elegiac autobiogra- phy (Tr. 4.10); the inspiration of the poet (Am. 1.1); on Tibullus’ death (Am.
3.9); Rome during the Age of Augustus (Ars am. 3.113–136); the Cyclops courts the beautiful Galatea (Met. 13.789–869); Caesar’s apotheosis and glorification of Augustus; epilogos of the Metamorphoses (15.746–879); the beginning of the year (Fast. 1.63–294); glorification of Octavianus as Au- gustus (Fast. 1.587–616); Ara Pacis (Fast. 1.709–724); celebration of Anna Perenna on 15 March (Fast. 3.523–656, 3.697–710); hymn on Venus, the goddess of spring and ancestress of Augustus (Fast. 4.85–132); praise of Augustus (Pont. 3.6).
The restriction of Latin education and the imperialist, as well as racist, modification of reading preferences in the curricula of Nazi Germany’s high school system (1933–1945) was ideologically motivated. Instead of the lib- eral poets Terence, Ovid, and Horace, students were to translate and in- terpret Caesar, Livy, and Tacitus. Caesar was presented as a proto-fascist strategic genius, Livy’s annalistic historiography was reduced to a collection of stories about patriotic values and chauvinist “heroism”, and Tacitus’ eth- nographical monograph Germania was instrumentalized as a glorification of the “[n]ordische […] Rasse” (Nordic race).19
16 The myths marked in bold throughout this chapter occur frequently in educational anthol- ogies.
17 Paul Hohnen, “Ovidlektüre in den zwanziger Jahren”, Der Altsprachliche Unterricht 27.4 (1984), 53.
18 Anton Kurfess, Kaiser Augustus und seine Zeit. Quellen zum Leben des Augustus und zum Verständnis des augusteischen Zeitalters; für den Schulgebrauch ausgew. und bearb. Text, Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1930.
19 Apel and Bittner, Humanistische Schulbildung, 307–308, 311–312.
The post-war (Latin) curricula in West Germany of the 1950s and 1960s are grounded in a revival of concepts of the Republic of Weimar, and they re-establish Ovid’s position as a first poetic inspiration for learners in the mid- dle grades (often the tenth year of school education). Primarily, the Metamor- phoses are read, supplied with additional texts from the Tristia and Fasti.20
Since the so-called great curricular turn at the beginning of the 1970s,21 the reading of Ovid’s works in gymnasia follows the lines of the concept of “multivalency”, that is, a multifaceted approach not restricted to linguis- tic and hermeneutic philological interpretation. The syllabus emphasizes the texts’ timelessness, their reception in different genres of art, and their relevance for our modern society as well as for the personal development of the individual learner (existentieller Transfer). In this way, students are to become more and more aware of fundamental questions of human ex- istence (for example, sex/gender, nature, culture, power, art).22 Due to this process, Ovid is again canonized as a standard author for the middle grades, although the canon of the curriculum is remarkably extended by the inclu- sion of medieval and neo-Latin authors.23 After centuries of comparative didactic neglect, the erotodidactic poems (Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris) are rediscovered as a subject of mythological education in German gymnasia during the 1980s.
Based on new methodological approaches in the substantially renewed academic research on Ovid’s works, there is an increasing appreciation of the postmodern playful and innovative (meta)poetics invented by Ovid also in di- dactic and curricular contexts.24 In the new millennium, this development
20 See Stefan Kipf, Altsprachlicher Unterricht in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Historische Entwicklung, didaktische Konzepte und methodische Grundfragen von der Nachkriegszeit bis zum Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts, Bamberg: Buchner, 2006, 132–133, 144: “Klassikerlektüre als Un- terrichtsrealität […] Ovid (zumeist Metamorphosen, ergänzt durch Tristien und Fasten)” (Reading classical writers as classes’ reality […] Ovid [mostly Metamorphoses, supplemented by Tristia and Fasti]).
21 At that time, the German educational system was fundamentally restructured according to the subjects’ social relevance in compliance with the “curricular theory” of Saul B. Robinsohn (1916–1972). Consequently, the curricula had to substantiate the so-called operationalized, i.e.
specific, scopes of education, instead of listing catalogues of contents.
22 Kipf, Altsprachlicher Unterricht, 355–361.
23 Ibidem, 446.
24 See, e.g., Joachim Latacz, “Ovids ‘Metamorphosen’ als Spiel mit der Tradition”, in Peter Neukam, ed., Verpflichtung der Antike, Dialog Schule – Wissenschaft. Klassische Sprachen und Literaturen 12, München: Bayerischer Schulbuch-Verlag, 1979, 5–49; Thomas Baier, “Überlegun- gen zur Lektüre von Ovids Metamorphosen in der Schule”, Die Alten Sprachen im Unterricht 61.1 (2013), 4–22.
is strengthened by new impulses inspired by the everlasting and even in- tensified power of Ovid as a miracle of reception, especially in multimedia adaptations of fantastic mythopoetic works for children and young adults.25 Reading and interpreting the Metamorphoses in the so-called Werklektüre (reading of just one work which considers also the broader contexts of single passages within the whole narrative) continues to resist the overwhelming trend towards anthological readings within higher-level thematic concepts (for example, literature and power, history and Augustan poets, art and nature). One important example of Werklektüre is the sequence “Mythos – Verwandlung und Spiel: Ovids Metamorphosen” in the current Bavarian cur- riculum.
The latest German anthologies of Ovid’s Metamorphoses designed and edited for didactic purposes are representative of this trend. Let us consider some prominent examples:
1. Ovid. Metamorphosen, Classica, edition and commentary by Verena Datené, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2015 (featuring the proem, the creation story, the Four Ages, Apollo and Daphne, Nar- cissus and Echo, Latona, Medea and Jason, Daedalus and Icarus, Or- pheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion);
2. Welt und Mensch im antiken Mythos. Ovid, Metamorphosen, Transfer, edition and commentary by Michael Dronia, Bamberg: Buchner, 2010 (featuring the proem, the Four Ages, the Flood, Apollo and Daph- ne, Arachne, Daedalus and Icarus, Orpheus and Eurydice, Aeneas, Augustus);
3. Ovid. Metamorphosen, Libellus, edition and commentary by Dennis Gressel and Karl-Heinz Pridik, Stuttgart and Leipzig: Klett, 2013 (fea- turing the proem, the creation story, the Four Ages, Assembly of the Gods, Europa and Jupiter, Narcissus and Echo, Pyramus and Thisbe, La- tona, Daedalus and Icarus, Philemon and Baucis, Orpheus and Eurydice, Caesar and Augustus);
4. Ovid. Metamorphosen, Latein Kreativ, edition and commentary by Ru- dolf Henneböhl, 4th edition, Bad Driburg: Ovid-Verlag, 2011 (featuring
25 Cf. Janka and Stierstorfer, “Von Arkadien über New York” as well as Markus Janka and Mi- chael Stierstorfer, “Von fragmentierten Familienverhältnissen antiker Heroen zu Patchworkfamilien in der Mythopoesie der Postmoderne. Phaethon, Perseus, Theseus und Herkules in Ovids Metamor- phosen und aktueller Kinder- und Jugendliteratur”, in Rolf Kussl, ed., Formen der Antikenrezeption in Literatur und Kunst, Dialog Schule – Wissenschaft. Klassische Sprachen und Literaturen 50, Ebelsbach: Aktiv Druck & Verlag, 2016, 64–98.
the proem, the creation story, the Four Ages, the Flood, Apollo and Daphne, Europa and Jupiter, Cadmus, Actaeon, Narcissus and Echo, Pyramus and Thisbe, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, Perseus and An- dromeda, Pluto and Proserpina, Niobe, the Lycian farmers, Daedalus and Icarus, Erysichthon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion, the Death of Adonis, Somnus and Morpheus, Fama, Pythagoras’ speech, the Apothe- osis of Caesar, the epilogue).
According to this short survey, and rather surprisingly, the passage on the Four Ages (Ov. Met. 1.89–162), which focuses on “scientific” learn- ing concerning cosmogony and collective anthropogony but lacks individual metamorphosis, dramatic suspense, and mythological narration in a more narrow sense, remains a standard reading in German classrooms and turns out to be the most prominent one in our corpus. This is probably due to the fact that mythological education, in this case, is understood as philosophy of nature and man in elegant hexametric form. Apart from that, the motif of “creation” is familiar from the biblical tradition, which facilitates starting from a common level of recognition and knowledge. In second place, we find the narration about the unhappy “first love” of the versatile young god Apollo for the virgin nymph Daphne (Ov. Met. 1.452–567), inflicted on him as revenge by the almighty little Eros. This story, which was shown to be a “programmatic metamorphosis”,26 introduces and proves the elegiac char- acter of Ovid’s grand epic, although the poet refashions the ancient mytho- logical tradition in a neoteric manner. Thus, the widespread preference for this tale can be interpreted as a reaction of Ovidian didactics to more recent trends in Ovidian studies with their characteristic stress on intertextuality, sex/gender, and cultural history.27
The most astonishing result of this little survey seems to be that ‒ with the exception of Orpheus and Eurydice (Ov. Met. 10.1–85) ‒ those heroes and stories that are most prominent in popular culture for children and
26 See Markus Janka, “Zorn und Zeit: Die Metamorphosen von Homers Ilias in Ovids Verwand- lungsepos”, in Rolf Kussl, ed., Themen und Texte. Anregungen für den Lateinunterricht, Dialog Schule – Wissenschaft. Klassische Sprachen und Literaturen 44, Speyer: Kartoffeldruck-Verlag, 2010, 79–128 (with further references).
27 See, e.g., the introduction of Rudolf Henneböhl, ed., Ovid. Metamorphosen, Bad Driburg:
Ovid-Verlag, 2006, 9–13, with many references to current Ovidian scholarship; see also Henneböhl’s commentary for teachers (Rudolf Henneböhl, ed., Ovid. Metamorphosen. Lehrerkommentar, Bad Driburg: Ovid-Verlag, 2007) with even more bibliographical details.
young adults,28 such as Perseus (for instance, Percy Jackson), Pluto, and Persephone, are of minor relevance in classroom contexts, since they are represented only once (in the exceptionally comprehensive anthology edited by Henneböhl). The reason for this seems to be primarily the power of didac- tic tradition, which only hesitantly widens the horizon and includes stories that, at first sight, offer less moral or philosophical depth.
The educational targets connected with the close reading, translating, and interpreting of these passages of Ovid’s main opus are defined, for ex- ample, in the recent Bavarian curriculum for Latin at the level of the tenth grade of gymnasium.29 They are formulated as follows:
1. Intense comparative analysis of evidence of the reception of Ovid in order to sharpen the learners’ aesthetic sensibility and their power of judgement.
2. Exact interpretation and aesthetic evaluation of evidence of the recep- tion of Ovid from all epochs and genres of art (that is, later Latin and vernacular texts, images, films, and other media to be compared with the originals and analysed with regard to the specific strategies of re- modelling the Ovidian hypotexts).
3. Accumulation of substantial knowledge with regard to the most im- portant myths and mythological figures and subjects from Greek and Roman antiquity.
4. Insight into processes of tradition and reception of literary subjects and motifs from antiquity up to contemporary high and popular culture.
5. Understanding of the playful, light-hearted, and ironic approach to the mythological tradition that links Ovid to contemporary works (such as Gerd Scherm’s Die Irrfahrer or Paul Shipton’s The Pig Scrolls).
6. Critical confrontation with different patterns of behaviour within a (ten- tative) identification with important mythological characters.
7. Knowledge of different points of view concerning the world and man as essential parts of European cultural history, which are transformed over the centuries up to postmodernism.
28 For detailed discussion and references, see Janka and Stierstorfer, “Von Arkadien über New York” and “Von fragmentierten Familienverhältnissen”.
29 See “Latein (1. und 2. Fremdsprache)”, Staatsinstitut für Schulqualität und Bildungs- forschung München, http://www.isb-gym8-lehrplan.de/contentserv/3.1.neu/g8.de/index.php?Sto- ryID=26212 (accessed 30 November 2018).
These learning objectives can be tackled by learning stations (Lern- zirkel) in addition to the teacher-centred instruction while translating and in- terpreting Ovidian passages. The following examples are taken from a sam- ple designed and edited by Michael Stierstorfer, Markus Janka, and Martin Hofschuster in 2017. This sequence employs both content that meets stu- dents’ interests and varying levels of difficulty to cope with individual needs of learners. As a method complementing the more traditional ways of teach- ing Latin, it can help to comprehend a wider range of artistic aspects.30 It consists of four basic stages, two expert stages, and one final stage.
This programme explicitly focuses on passages vividly adapted in pop- ular culture, but rather neglected in the canonical anthologies for classroom use mentioned above. In sections 1 and 2 (Cerberus and Hercules, Perseus and Medusa), the students work on comparative and partly creative tasks (such as rewriting or continuing texts or transforming their contents into a different artistic genre), based on German translations of passages from the Metamorphoses. In sections 3 and 4 (Phaethon and Helius, Apollo and Daphne), the Latin original is printed in the form of a synopsis beside the German translation so that questions about Latin expressions and style can be included. The expert section 5 (Theseus and the Minotaur) contains only the Latin text with translations of singular vocabulary items, and the final, sixth section (Orpheus and Eurydice) features only Latin text without an- notations, so that a cumulative increase of difficulty is ensured. By the use of different media (texts, images, audiobooks, films), different senses are activated and heterogeneous types of learners are included. This allows for a multisensory enjoyment of ancient and postmodern mythopoetic adapta- tions. The different contemporary multimedia adaptations also encourage the students to draw parallels between the Ovidian “source” and the con- temporary “target” medium and to develop analytical skills in detecting the strategies of functionalizing ancient myths for aesthetic, philosophical, and ideological purposes of our own culture.
By producing a synthesis of the results of the individual groups, the students are able to integrate their new knowledge within the com- plex and artful composition of the Metamorphoses as a whole. Sections 1 and 2 can be accomplished by a single student, sections 3 and 4 in pairs, and
30 Cf. Marina Keip and Thomas Doepner, eds., Interaktive Fachdidaktik Latein, Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010, 175–190.
sections 5 and 6 by small groups of students, so that all learners can be involved in the tasks.
As an illustration of this didactic concept, we present the English trans- lation of the second section of our programme, which gives instructions on how to compare the famous passage about Perseus’ beheading of Medusa, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (4.776–786), with its cinematic adaptation in the film Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (dir. Chris Columbus, 2010):
Section 2: Perseus and Medusa – If Medusa Ran a Shop with Statues
1. One myth – many variants: in the film, Percy is presented as the son of Poseidon. Find out about his ancestry and his childhood from a myth- ological lexicon and present a summary of your findings. What might be the reason for the film to deviate from the mythological tradition?
2. In the film, Medusa is beheaded with the help of an iPod after an exciting chase. Read the text printed below and find out how Medusa is defeated in Ovid’s version. Write down your thoughts about how and why the film deviates from its literary source.
3. “I used to date your daddy!”, Medusa says to Percy in the film. Consult a mythological lexicon and find out what her “love affair“ with Percy’s father has to do with her hair made of venomous snakes.
4. Read Ovid’s text and watch the film scene. Then, explain why the myth of Medusa is particularly suitable for various stories of metamorphosis.
I. Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.776–786 (Perseus and Medusa):
(At his wedding reception with Andromeda, Perseus reminds the audience of his former deeds.)
This [the eye of the Phorcyads] while being passed from one to the other, he told, was cleverly
stolen by him [Perseus], pushing his hand secretly under, and through remote, impassable, rocky land, paralysed by the rustling of the woods,
he reached Gorgo’s home, and all around on the fields
and on the pathways, he saw phantoms of humans and animals that were frozen in stone by the gaze of Medusa.
But he met the nightmare on the shield that his left hand held, and saw it in a bronze mirror, the figure of Medusa.
When heavy sleep rested on her snakes and herself,
he cut the head off her throat, and the winged
Pegasus with his brother was born out of their mother’s streams of blood.31
4. Conclusions
To sum up, there is a continuous and rich tradition of mythological education based on Ovid’s main works that goes back to Ovid’s own times. The later centuries, however, tended to reduce the educational value, especially of the Metamorphoses, to an inspirational source for aesthetic artistry and poetic versatility. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the gleaming brightness of Ovid’s ingenuity was rather overshadowed by the other Augus- tan Classics, Virgil and Horace. Consequently, the reading and interpreting of the Metamorphoses was restricted to the middle level of secondary edu- cation and fulfilled a more or less propaedeutic function for the subsequent reading of Virgil and Horace. Only during recent decades, and especially in the new millennium, the multimedia appeal and the playful, quasi-post- modernist attitude of Ovid’s poetry have been rediscovered as refreshing stimuli of a complex and intellectually demanding mythological education, based on the fascinating metamorphoses of the Metamorphoses in the cur- rent aetas Ovidiana.
31 English translation by M.J.
Appendices
1. German Gymnasium Structure
Table 1: Number of teaching hours per week in gymnasia schooling in the nineteenth century.
Sexta (1 year)
≈ Grade 4
Quinta (1 year)
≈ Grade 5
Quarta (1 year)
≈ Grade 6
Tertia (2 years)
≈ Grades 7 and 8
Secunda (2 years)
≈ Grades 9 and 10
Prima (3 years)
≈ Grades 11, 12, and 13
Latin 6 6 8 8 8 8
Greek – – 5 5 7 7
Hebrew – – – – (2) (2)
German 6 6 4 4 4 4
History/
geography 3 3 3 3 3 3
Maths 6 6 6 6 6 6
Natural
sciences 2 2 2 2 2 2
Religious
education 2 2 2 2 2 2
Drawing
lessons 3 3 2 2 – –
Total 28 28 32 32 32 (34) 32 (34)
Note: Numbers in brackets refer to facultative subjects.
Source: Adapted from Manfred Fuhrmann’s Latein und Europa. Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts in Deutschland von Karl dem Großen bis Wilhelm II., Köln: DuMont, 2001, 149. Translated by M.J. and M.S.
Table 2: Number of teaching hours per week in current Bavarian gymnasium schooling (humanistic grammar school) for students from the age of ten (Grade 5) onwards (valid since 1 August 2018).
Compulsory subjects Grade
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Religious education/ethics 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
German 5 4 4 4 3 3 3
Latin/English 5 4 4 3 3 3 3
English/Latin – 4 4 4 3 3 3
Greek – – – 4 4 3 3
Maths 4 4 4 3 4 3 3
Compulsory subjects Grade
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Informatics – – – – – – 2
Physics – – – 2 2 2 2
Chemistry – – – – 2 3 –
Biology – – – 2 2 2 –
Nature and technology 3 3 2 – – – –
History – 2 2 2 2 1 1
Politics and society – – – – – 1 2
Geography 2 – 2 – – 2 2
Economics and law – – – – – 2 2
Art 2 2 2 1 1 1
Music 2 2 2 1 1 1 2
Sports 2 2 2
2 2 2 2
3
Compulsory intensification hours 3 – – – –
Module for vocational orientation – – – – 0.5 – –
Project seminar on study and vocational
orientation – – – – – – 2
Total 30 each (+1/+2) 30 31.5 34 34
Optional intensification hours 6
Source: Table derived from “Stundentafeln für die Jahrgangsstufen 5 bis 11”, Bayerische Staatskanzlei, http://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/BayGSO-ANL_1?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 (accessed 30 May 2019). Translated by M.J. and M.S.
2. Anthologies in Contemporary German School Publications
Datené, Verena, ed., Ovid. Metamorphosen, Classica, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2015.
Dronia, Michael, Welt und Mensch im antiken Mythos. Ovid, Metamorphosen, Trans- fer, Bamberg: Buchner, 2010.
Gressel, Dennis, and Karl-Heinz Pridik, Ovid. Metamorphosen, Libellus, Stuttgart:
Klett, 2011.
Henneböhl, Rudolf, Ovid-Metamorphosen-Comic, Pictura 1, illustrated by Jonás Em- manuel, Bad Driburg: Ovid-Verlag, 2014.
Henneböhl, Rudolf, ed., Ovid. Metamorphosen, 4th ed., Latein Kreativ, Bad Driburg:
Ovid-Verlag, 2011 (ed. pr. 2006).
Table 2 (continued)
Henneböhl, Rudolf, ed., Ovid. Metamorphosen. Lehrerkommentar, Latein Kreativ, Bad Driburg: Ovid-Verlag, 2007.
Janka, Markus, ed., Ovid. Doctor Amoris. Textausgabe ausgewählter erotischer Dich- tungen mit Schülerkommentar und Übungsmaterialien, Testimonia, Bamberg:
Buchner, 2003.
Janka, Markus, ed., Ovid. Mutatae formae. Textausgabe ausgewählter Metamor- phosen mit Schülerkommentar und Übungsmaterialien, Testimonia, Bamberg:
Buchner, 2004.
Kammerer, Andrea, ed., Leben, Lieben, Lästern. Catull, Ovid, Martial, Transfer, Bam- berg: Buchner, 2010.
Maier, Friedrich, Europa. Ikarus. Orpheus. Abendländische Symbolfiguren in Ovids Metamorphosen. Fächerverbindende Projekte, Antike und Gegenwart, Bam- berg: Buchner, 1998, with commentary for teachers.
Maier, Friedrich, and Luise Maier, eds., Ovid. Ars amatoria. Lieben ‒ Bezaubern ‒ Erobern, Antike und Gegenwart, Bamberg: Buchner, 2001.
Stierstorfer, Michael, Markus Janka, and Martin Hofschuster, “Percy Jackson und Ovids Metamorphosen im Lateinunterricht? Ein praxiserprobter Lernzirkel im Spannungsfeld zwischen Antike und Postmoderne”, Der Altsprachliche Unter- richt 60.1: Antike in der Jugendliteratur (2017), with online materials available at https://www.friedrich-verlag.de/latein-altgriechisch/rezeption/percy-jack- son-und-ovids-metamorphosen-im-lateinunterricht-3731 (accessed 30 Novem- ber 2020).
Zitzl, Christian, ed., Alles bleibt anders. Ovid, Metamorphosen, Transfer, Bamberg:
Buchner, 2008.
