N EW F ACULTY I NITIATIVE G RANT P ROPOSAL 2002-2003
J ANICE S IEGEL
D EPARTMENT OF F OREIGN L ANGUAGES , I LLINOIS S TATE U NIVERSITY
“D
ISPENSING W ITH D IONYSUS IN O VID
’
S T ALE OF P ROCNE , P HILOMELA AND T EREUS
”
ABSTRACT
I request support from the URG program for a study that will offer a new reading of the Procne-PhilomelaTereus episode as presented in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (6.424-
674). This reading will form part of a larger study, to be focused on arguing that Ovid carefully constructs an apologia for the popularly vilified Procne: he presents her murder and cooking of her son as a justifiable, rational and balanced response to her husband’s crimes of familial rape and mutilation. The portion of the project to be funded by this summer grant specifically concerns Ovid’s use of Dionysian imagery in his presentation.
Since a literal reading of this imagery suggests that the maddened women act under the influence of Dionysus in concocting their revenge--a literal reading that my thesis explicitly contradicts--I intend to arg ue that Ovid’s use of this imagery is ironical and designed to evoke from readers a response exactly opposite to the usual function of such imagery in classical literature.
STATEMENT OF NEED
Ovid’s version of the myth of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus in his
Metamorphoses is the most complete and shockingly detailed rendering of this tale in the ancient tradition. It is the core of any study devoted to this myth: the barbarian king
Tereus rapes, detongues, imprisons, and reports as dead his virginal, Athenian, sisterin-law Philomela, who then weaves a tapestry to communicate her plight to her sister
Procne, who then liberates Philomela and conceives of a damning retributive strike: to kill, butcher, cook, and serve her child Itys to his father Tereus.
The u nique contribution of my project will be an integrated reading of Ovid’s entire presentation that focuses on the character of Procne, for it is Procne’s liberation of
Philomela that is the fulcrum upon which this tale is balanced. My conclusion is that Ovid offers a very careful presentation of Procne’s vengeance as a justifiably equal and opposite reaction to the crimes of her husband, not an over reaction due to insanity, overpowering emotion, or the influence of the god Dionysus.
This myth – and particularly Ovid’s version of it - has attracted considerable critical attention from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, but none of the published scholarship provides a persuasive reading of the myth as a whole. Although each of the following studies offers insight into some aspect of the myth, scholars have tended to hyper-focus on the particular scenes or elements which may support their view, and ignore the complicating details that fail to. For example, Freudian analysis of this myth seeks to explain Procne’s choice of victim: Itys is nothing but a substitute
Tereus to her, and “transference” explains her wrath (Deutsch, Slater). Ignoring most details of plot, structuralists warn of the devastating potential for culture to be destroyed by unbridled nature, as illustrated by the series of binary oppositions represented by the key characters: barbarian/Greek, male/female, wild/tamed, animal/human (Irving, Segal).
Feminists celebrate the oppressed Philomela for overcoming her male oppressor with the culturally feminine art of weaving (Richlin, Joplin, Zeitlin, Pantelia), but they never discuss Procne, whose actions appear indefensible to readers (even feminist scholars) without insight into Ovid’s presentation.
My argument is that Ovid’s entire 250-line episode is geared to presenting a quid pro quo justice triumphantly delivered by Procne in the penultimate scene of this drama.

Janice Siegel
New Faculty Initiative Grant Proposal
”Dispensing with Dionysus”
November 1, 2001
In the first part of this project, already completed, I carefully traced the series of textual reciprocities linking Procne’s vengeance with Tereus’ crimes. Structurally, lexically, poetically, metrically – in every possible way -- Ovid presents Procne’s thoughts, actions and emotions as responses to those previously ascribed to Tereus. The second part of this project, also complete d, argues a symbolic equivalence between Tereus’ treatment of Philomela and Procne’s treatment of Itys. The remaining portion of this project, and the focus of this proposal, is to explain why Ovid includes the imagery of Dionysus in his presentation, since a literal reading of such imagery is explicitly contradicted by my proposed reading of the myth.
One reason I am determined to accomplish this project without delay is so that I can refute in print the only published arguments concerning Ovid’s use of Dionysian imagery in his tale of Procne. A number of “myth-in ritualists” (scholars who see all myth as derived from ancient, ritualistic worship of the gods) do conclude that when Ovid’s women kill, dismember, cook and serve the child as food, they are acting irrationally, in a
Dionysian-induced frenzy. Their argument fails because of an intrinsic weakness of the approach: the reading takes details out of context and fails to explain the actions of the characters and how they relate to each other. In order to argue that Procne and
Philomela act under the influence of the god Dionysus, ritualists Burkert, Otto, and
Seaford all ignore the contributory actions of the rapist and mutilator Tereus (his name does not even appear in their studies). The sisters’ brilliant responses are conflated and unflatteringly reduced to what a leading scholar calls "the most familiar literary models for female violence: madness, rage, maenadism," (Segal, "Philomela’s Web," 274).
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Myth-in-ritualist scholars understand that the women cannot at one and the same time pursue a personal vengeance and act in accordance with the desires of the jealous god Dionysus, so they choose to ignore the former. I choose to argue against the latter. I seek to explain Ovid’s use of Dionysian imagery and themes in a way that does not abrogate the husband Tereus’ precipitating actions. I expect my research in this area to enrich my argument that Ovid carefully constructs a pattern of reciprocity of action in the course of his poetic presentation, and that all elements of his poem contribute to this.
Why is Ovid the only chronicler of this tale to fill in the details of Procne’s liberation of Philomela? Why does he choose to introduce the Dionysian element at that particular point in the story, the point where Procne responds to a personal injustice?
Why is it necessary for the formidable Procne to dress and arm herself as a Bacchante
(Latin equivalent of a female worshipper of Dionysus)? Wouldn’t a true Bacchante seek to worship the god in the wilds? on the mountain top? in the woods? Then why does
Procne bring Philomela back to the palace to commit their atrocity? Would a woman truly imbued with the spirit of Dionysus have the presence of mind to come up with lies to entice her husba nd to sit down at the dinner table alone? Wouldn’t true Bacchantes participate in wild revelry, ripping wild animals apart with their bare hands (sparagmos) and eating them raw (omophagia)? Procne and Philomela specifically do not join Tereus at table, and this sacrificial animal is hewn with knives, not bare hands, and its meat is cooked, not left raw.
Clearly, Procne and Philomela do not act like typical Bacchantes, and yet Ovid does appear to invite us to see their actions as painted by a Bacchic brush. But the reflection of Dionysian literary models is profoundly distorted. I shall consider how the women’s actions compare to literary treatments of women truly infected with the
Dionysian spirit in order to understand the nature of Ovid’s allusions. Do they respond like women who willingly worship the god? Or are they more akin to those punished by
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Janice Siegel
New Faculty Initiative Grant Proposal
”Dispensing with Dionysus”
November 1, 2001 the god for initially rejecting him, punished by being duped into killing their own children?
Since Procne and Philomela do not exactly fit into either category, what are we to make of the resonances?
I am convinced that great significance lies behind every instance in which Ovid diverges from the accepted traditional presentation of this tale. In a chapter in my dissertation, I argued that Ovid purposely divests his tale of godly presence although in every other mythographic treatment of this myth the action is motivated, directed and resolved by divine intervention (gods involved include Zeus, Artemis, Aphrodite and others, but –curiously--never Dionysus). Throughout Ovid’s tale, either nature or human beings appropriate the power hitherto attributed to the gods, suggesting that divine forces have no effect here, either positive (by providing a moral path for the women to follow) or negative (as providing the stimulus to vengeful action). If this is the case, then perhaps Ovid wishes us to see Procne as doing the work of a vengeful Dionysus, known in Greek myth as “Lusios,” both Liberator and Destroyer. Procne’s actions do irreparably rend the social fabric and bring down the house, as is the usual outcome of such
Dionysian tales, but Ovid also never lets us forget that her impetus for action is the barbaric acts of her husband against her sister. This suggestion that Procne is a stand-in for Dionysus is worth tracking with a close reading of the text.
Certainly Ovid evokes well-known images of Dionysian revelry and tragedy for his own purposes. Yet another example of Ovid’s divergence from time-honored mythographic traditions confirms my understanding of his plan. In Greek and Roman mythology, there is a grand tradition of child-feasts, all of which follow certain patterns.
All child feasters of antiquity discover the identity of their meal after they have eaten in the same way: they are shown a basket bearing some combination of head, hands and feet of the victim. So why does Ovid make a break with this tradition and orchestrate the scene so that Philomela reveals the truth to Tereus by thrusting the gory, decapitated head of his dead son in his face? In this case, I suspect that Ovid intended to evoke the penultimate scene of Euripides’ inarguably Dionysian Bacchae , in which Agave holds high the severed head of the son she has just killed. But I am equally confident that Ovid did not intend a straight parallel. I bel ieve that a study of the many other “pseudo-
Bacchic ” elements in this final discovery scene will prove the same conclusion seen throughout my study: that Ovid incorporates Dionysian imagery into his poem as a way to contrast these pseudo-Dionysian scenes with the scenes of true orgiastic, ritualistic violence they clearly evoke, as an effective way to highlight the truly human cause of
Procne, Philomela and Tereus’ horror.
PLAN FOR RESEARCH
I will apply the traditional philological techniques of scholars engaged in studies of intertextuality, defined as “the study of the deliberate allusion of one author to the words of a previous author” (Hinds, preface to Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry , 1998). I will first identify ever y instance in Ovid’s poem where he evokes Dionysian vocabulary, imagery, and action. I will read what the myth-in-ritualists have concluded about these scenes. I will then compare these Ovidian images and scenes to the rather small body of ancient literature dedicated to the presentation of true
Dionysian rapture (perhaps 6 texts in all). I will engage in a careful reading of both
“contained” and “containing” texts (original and allusive) in Latin or Greek in order to determine how Ovid’s scene offers an ironic allusion in each case.
The result of this project will be an essay I plan to submit to a leading classical journal, and possibly a presentation at a professional conference.
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