From Ovidio to Silvina Ocampo: stories of love and metamorphosis

Abstract

The work analyzes the relationship between metamorphosis and love in two stories by Silvina Ocampo: “El automóvil” (1987) and “Amada en el amado” (1970). The Ovidian version of the myth of Echo and Narcissus, the quintessence of love and metamorphosis, is taken as a point of comparison. In these stories, metamorphosis is a resolution for love stories; however, in Ovidio it has a positive aspect, but in Ocampo the opposite happens. The author questions the idea of love, which leads her female protagonists to self-destruction, parodying literary conventions on love and gender roles from the fantastic, and modernizing the literary tradition on metamorphosis.