SOURCE: Tissol, Garth. “Glittering Trifles: True Imitation: Ceyx, Alcyone, and Morpheus.” In The Face of Nature: Wit, Narrative, and Cosmic Origins in Ovid's Metamorphoses, pp. 72-84. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Tissol offers a close textual explication of the Ceyx and Alcyone episode in the Metamorphoses.

True Imitation: Ceyx, Alcyone, and Morpheus

The cave of Sleep, along with its inhabitants, occupies our attention for many lines in the midst of the vast tale of Ceyx and Alcyone (Met. 11.592-649). These are perhaps the richest of Ovid's personifications. Here again, Ovid's critics tend to see the relation, if any, between this extended passage and its context as one of digressive irrelevance. Like comic relief as the presumed purpose of Ovidian wit, this complex of personifications, “full of Ovidian whimsy and ingenuity,” according to Galinsky, supposedly “offsets the pathos of the conclusion of the episode.” On this...