Farrell, Joseph2023-05-222023-05-2219922016-08-10https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/7998Among the central critical issues surrounding Ovid's Metamorphoses--indeed, underlying many of this challenging text's unsolved problems--is the question of genre. Is the poem epic or a species of epic (e.g., anti-epic, epic parody, elegized epic, or epicized elegy); a type of Kollektivgedicht, stringing together either a series of examples from some miniature form such as the epyllion, or else sampling now one genre, now another; or is it simply unique, resisting any effort at categorization? Despite the intelligent and detailed discussion that the question has received during the past seventy-five years, it is safe to say that no critical consensus has emerged.Copyright © 1992 Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in The American Journal of Philology 113:2 (1992), 235-268. Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press.Arts and HumanitiesClassicsArticle