Roman Eyes: Visuality & Subjectivity in Art & Text by Jaś Elsner

216 PHOENIX Chapter Six, "Monster-Slayer," gives the accounts of Theseus' battle with the Minotaur and other exploits from Bacchylides 18, Catullus 64, and Ovid, to show the techniques various texts use to give very different perspectives on the hero. Chapter Seven, "Chiron," does the same for the treatments of the centaur in Pindar, Horace, and Ovid, with attention to his function in the larger text. Chapter Eight, "Metamorphosed Monsters," compares Ovid's treatment of Medusa to Lucan's, and his treatment of Scylla to that in Homer and Virgil, to draw attention to the ways in which Ovid induces our sympathy for the monsters. Chapter Nine, on Jason and the Argonauts, compares three "monster" episodes from Apollonius to the 1963 Hollywood film "Jason and the Argonauts." In the conflicts with Talos, the dragon, and the sown men, Murgatroyd shows how the Hollywood production minimizes the importance of Medea, who is the hero of all three scenes in Apollonius. Chapters Ten and Eleven, "Fighting with Monsters" 1 and 2, shows how Proppian analysis can be used as an effective tool of literary criticism. Murgatroyd has analysed twenty-six scenes involving conflict with monsters in classical and other mythologies, and identified three possible stages and thirty-one possible functions (that is, plot-driving actions) in such narratives. No single narrative has all thirty-one functions, and many do not have all three stages. With this analysis in place, it is easy, to see which functions, and stages, any individual narrative has left out, and which it has emphasized, and use the effect of those omissions or emphases as the starting point for further discussion, a technique Murgatroyd then uses in Chapter Eleven in his discussion of two conflict narratives— Zeus and Typhoeus, and Perseus and Andromeda—in different texts. Chapter Twelve, finally, gives a close reading of the treatment of Polyphemus in Homer, Euripides' Cyclops, Vergil, Theocritus, Ovid, and Lucian. Murgatroyd does not assume any previous knowledge in his reader. He explains what a sphinx is, re-tells the story of Oedipus, and glosses Achilles as "best of the Greek warriors who fought at Troy." Neither does he assume that the reader will be reading the entire book. Chapter Eight begins with a description of the Metamorphoses, although the poem has been used frequently in previous chapters. Chapter Eleven quotes, at greater length, the same chunk of Manilius used in Chapter Two. Chapters can thus easily be excerpted by instructors for classroom readings on particular points. Murgatroyd's style is well-suited to his intended readership; it is colloquial, informal, and engaging. I would single out for special praise here the entertaining discussion of Ray Hariyhausen's "Jason and the Argonauts." I recommend the book to instructors of undergraduate mythology classes, to give students an accessible guide to literary approaches to classical myth. University of Victoria Laurel Bowman Roman Eyes: Visuality & Subjectivity in Art & Text. By Jas Elsner. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2007. Pp. 350. Jas Elsner has long worked in the areas of visuality in Roman art, the subjectivity of viewing, and the interaction of text and image. His studies have not been concerned so much with how the modern art historian interprets Roman art, but rather with the way that ancient viewers construct their own subjective viewing, conditioned by the ideologies of their own culture and influenced by the contemporary context of art. The present volume brings together a number of previously published papers, written over the last fifteen years and here substantially revised and supplemented by two new chapters, which BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 217 explore various viewing patterns in the Greco-Roman world from the classical period to late antiquity. The book is divided into two parts, "Ancient Discourses on Art" (Chapters Two to Four) and "Ways of Viewing" (Chapters Five to Ten and Epilogue). It is well illustrated, including a set of colour plates between the two parts. An introductory chapter, entitled "Between Mimesis and Divine Power," provides a good example of the scope and methodology of Eisner's book. The chapter deals with Naturalism in art and its effect on various viewers. Pompeian wall paintings of Andromeda are set beside Achilles Tatius' and Philostratus' descriptions of...

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