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Ovid's Metamorphoses
Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature (Series Kathleen Coleman and Richard Rutherford) introduces individual works of Greek and Latin literature to readers who are approaching them for the first time. Each volume sets the work in its literary and historical context, and aims to offer a balanced and engaging assessment of its content, artistry, and purpose. A brief survey of the influence of the work upon subsequent generations is included to demonstrate its enduring relevance and power. All quotations from the original are translated into English.
Ovid's Metamorphoses have been seen as both the culmination of and a revolution in the classical epic tradition, transferring narrative interest from war to love and fantasy. This introduction considers how Ovid found and shaped his narrative from the creation of the world to his own sophisticated times, illustrating the cruelty of jealous gods, the pathos of human love, and the imaginative fantasy of flight, monsters, magic, and illusion. Elaine Fantham introduces the reader not only to this marvelous and complex narrative poem, but to the Greek and Roman traditions behind Ovid's tales of transformation and a selection of the images and texts that it inspired.
Ovid's Metamorphoses have been seen as both the culmination of and a revolution in the classical epic tradition, transferring narrative interest from war to love and fantasy. This introduction considers how Ovid found and shaped his narrative from the creation of the world to his own sophisticated times, illustrating the cruelty of jealous gods, the pathos of human love, and the imaginative fantasy of flight, monsters, magic, and illusion. Elaine Fantham introduces the reader not only to this marvelous and complex narrative poem, but to the Greek and Roman traditions behind Ovid's tales of transformation and a selection of the images and texts that it inspired.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published July 15, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 3, 2015
Fantham's book on the Metamorphoses is a great introduction for undergraduates and graduates alike. She arranges the text thematically and even in her exposition of the text, she always manages to convey something really revealing about it. Overall, Fantham has a knack for explaining why the Metamorphoses is so profound, so moving, and so important. I fundamentally disagree with her about Ovid and his relation to Augustus (this is the case across her scholarship) and I think the book is lacking a good analysis of Ovid and rape and general violence against women, which is surprising because of how great her chapter on gender was otherwise.
December 24, 2025
Did not finish. Encyclopedic treatment of the Greek gods. My goal in reading this was to understand the rest of western lit better, but had to stop about 1/3 the way through, too many rape stories.
February 22, 2021
Ovid's Metamorphoses is timeless. My favourite verse would be The Ages of Mankind, as it feels so present and relevant. A must-read text for everyone and anyone. Truly a piece of art.
June 20, 2011
Wow. That is about the only response to have to the Metamorphoses without knowing a lot more about the book than I do. Though it took me about half the book to clue into this, the poem starts at the beginning of time, and then wends its way through history. But unlike lots of books that take a similar gambit, Ovid doesn't go on to the apocalypse, but instead mostly just leaves us in the present day, which I really liked.
Along the way, Ovid stitches together the creation myths and otherwise of the Greeks into a coherent framework-- I'd need to really sit down and study this to get the details, but my impression is that he has some recurring figures he returns to for a couple books at a time-- so we get the house of Cadmus for a while, and then we have a collection of tales that are contiguous with Bacchus, and then we move from the Trojan war to the present. Oh yeah, did you know that Ovid incorporates the entirety of the Trojan War, and the best parts of the Aeneid? That he gives us the backstory of Polyphemus, the cyclops from the Odyssey, and also what else happened after Odysseus left? Well, he does.
Pretty much everything is in this book, and it's that scope that makes the book so impressive. It's really massive, and sustained, and when you're conscious of it, it's wonderfully crafted so that there are clear thematic links that develop book by book. So the chapter that includes Ariadne, I think, tells the story of what happens when men (and women) try to make art. Later chapters tackle things like what happens if you let women influence politics, etc. Sometimes the links are harder to discern, but I'm sure they are there.
There are lots of things to like here, piece by piece. The version of the Midas story, for example, is quite great and different than I remember seeing it before. The Orpheus-Euridice story is good, but Ovid is great-- and scandalous-- on what follows. The Caesar stuff was really surprising to see here, but I think it was also really well handled. The rise of Bacchus is also delightful and weird and narratively as dense as any un-pruned thicket.
I didn't find a lot of poetry in the translation I read-- which is not this one, unfortunately-- and I felt the loss. I got a clear sense of Ovid's global artistry, but had little appreciation for the work line by line. That said, a work like this is of such monumental scope and richness that I'm not sure I'd ever have finished it if the translation were rich on that level.
I didn't read this translation-- mine was by
Along the way, Ovid stitches together the creation myths and otherwise of the Greeks into a coherent framework-- I'd need to really sit down and study this to get the details, but my impression is that he has some recurring figures he returns to for a couple books at a time-- so we get the house of Cadmus for a while, and then we have a collection of tales that are contiguous with Bacchus, and then we move from the Trojan war to the present. Oh yeah, did you know that Ovid incorporates the entirety of the Trojan War, and the best parts of the Aeneid? That he gives us the backstory of Polyphemus, the cyclops from the Odyssey, and also what else happened after Odysseus left? Well, he does.
Pretty much everything is in this book, and it's that scope that makes the book so impressive. It's really massive, and sustained, and when you're conscious of it, it's wonderfully crafted so that there are clear thematic links that develop book by book. So the chapter that includes Ariadne, I think, tells the story of what happens when men (and women) try to make art. Later chapters tackle things like what happens if you let women influence politics, etc. Sometimes the links are harder to discern, but I'm sure they are there.
There are lots of things to like here, piece by piece. The version of the Midas story, for example, is quite great and different than I remember seeing it before. The Orpheus-Euridice story is good, but Ovid is great-- and scandalous-- on what follows. The Caesar stuff was really surprising to see here, but I think it was also really well handled. The rise of Bacchus is also delightful and weird and narratively as dense as any un-pruned thicket.
I didn't find a lot of poetry in the translation I read-- which is not this one, unfortunately-- and I felt the loss. I got a clear sense of Ovid's global artistry, but had little appreciation for the work line by line. That said, a work like this is of such monumental scope and richness that I'm not sure I'd ever have finished it if the translation were rich on that level.
I didn't read this translation-- mine was by
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews