Espace et structure dans les Métamorphoses d'Ovide

In this study, the relationship between Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the notion of space is analyzed in the three different directions of the concept (geometrical space), of the experience (practical space) and of representations (metaphorical space). The cosmogony, the first tale in the Metamorphoses, bild boundaries between the elements, while the birth of human beings includes their transgression. The Metamorphoses offer the reader a journey to Rome punctuated by indications of a progressive control of Rome about the world. The chosen space of the text thus becomes the terrestrial space and its geography. But this is only an illusory kind of linearity. The text is constructed upon a tension within which space is the driving force. There is a strong sense of fear of a return to the initial chaos and the book is constructed around the programmatic expression of the discors concordia. The beings who inhabit the world take part in this tension. The cosmogony has laid the foundations for a spatial ontology. Spaces are thresholds where the identity of all beings is played out and questioned, in an ontology in movement that unites the transformations of space and nature.