Diana’s Hounds (Metamorphosis 2)
摘要
This chapter continues the study of Ovid’s influence by turning to the legend of Actaeon and Diana as it appears in Book III of Metamorphoses: a male hunter, who inadvertently disturbs the goddess bathing naked with her attendant nymphs, is punished by being changed into a stag and is consequently savaged by his own hounds. The chapter opens with a mid-twentieth-century statue of Diana in London’s Green Park as an example of how this particular dog story has been reinterpreted and re-envisioned over the years. The subsequent focus is in large part upon paintings by Titian, but there are also analyses of works by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel as well as of an erotic portrait of Diana and a dog, dating from the sixteenth century and now in the Louvre. Mention is made of the convention of representing young girls in the guise of Diana attended by dogs of the greyhound type. The poet Ted Hughes found disturbing truths in the story of Actaeon, while in 2012 fourteen other well-known writers (including Seamus Heaney and Christopher Reid) were invited to respond to an exhibition of the Titian paintings held at the National Gallery in London. Throughout this chapter the implicit contrast is between the harshness of Ovid’s revenge narrative and the preferred image of modern dogs, including greyhounds, as loyal pets.