Southern Hospitality In Ovid's Metamorphoses

Ovid’s poem, Metamorphoses is all about change and transformation. Specifically with the ideas of love and lust and mortal beings often transforming into mythical ones. With the ideas of lust and love comes a popular themes in his poem: the idea of Chivalry. Men or gods chasing after women using manners and respect to show to them that they are worthy of such love, as Apollo from the story Daphne says, “It is love that impels me to follow you”(Ovid 30). The most important ideals of chivalry come from the use of manners and respect. With regards to states in the south including: Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama to name a few they place a very high emphasis on using manners and treating guests right. Which is where the idea of southern

There are cultural differences in the United States, regionally, state to state, and even city to city. Having an emphasis on manners, respect, and friendliness has been a way of life taught to kids who grew up in these southern states. Hospitality origins began on the farm life, “Southern hospitality first existed as a narrowly defined body of social practices among the antebellum planter classes, but it also exists as a discourse, as a meaning-making story continually told and re-told about the south” ( Szczesiul 127). Few southerners, such as the wealthy and farmers, practiced these social conventions. Manners seem to be this story told and passed down to each generation that continues the tradition by instilling these practices into their own kids lives. It’s a way of life for most. It is a lifestyle, just like city life. Szczesiul continues to say,“Rather than being acknowledged as a myth, southern hospitality more often that not is unquestionably accepted as a natural cultural attribute of the south”. This characteristic is firmly rooted in the unique history of the south, forming part of the way of life for most residents there (Szczesiul 128). He mentions that it is a characteristic and that Southerners identify and even pride themselves on having these qualities. He even goes as far to say that southern hospitality is no myth at all, but a building block of southern life.

according to five cultural constructs. These constructs Dupuis focused on were: geographic, climatic, economic, linguistic, and communication patterns. Which he said represented the cultural lines and regions in a country. While up for debate, Dupuis strictly defined the southern region as, “Delaware, Maryland, D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana”(Dupuis 15). Regarding communication patterns as the focus of our interest, manners, etiquette, and hospitality would fall under said category. Surprisingly Dupuis found that, “there are no significant differences in over all culture” between the defined southern region and the northern region (Dupuis 107). It is difficult to know what single category distinguishes the results of, no difference but the results were not all against southern hospitality. “Study suggest that there were cultural differences found… between the sexes in a long term perspective” (Dupuis 107). This could indicate that between different sexes there is a cultural difference between the uses of manners. Although the study found no significant differences in cultural regions, the five constructs used by Dupuis were also not the exact dimensions of southern hospitality.