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The '''Metamorphoses''' by the Roman poet Ovid is a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world, drawing from Greek and Roman mythological traditions. Probably written between 2 and 8 CE, it has remained one of the most popular works of mythology, being the Classical work best known to medieval writers and thus having a great deal of influence on medieval poetry.

Contents

Content

Inspirations and adaptations

Manuscript tradition

Notes

See also

External links

Content

Ovid emphasizes tales of transformation often found in myths, in which a person or lesser deity is permanently transformed into an animal or plant. The poem begins with the transformations of creation and Prometheus metamorphizing earth into Man and ends with the transformation of the spirit of Julius Caesar into a star. Ovid goes from one to the other by working his way through mythology, often in apparently arbitrary fashion, jumping from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek myth and sometimes straying in odd directions. The poem is often called a mock-epic. It is written in dactylic hexameter, the form of the great heroic and nationalistic epic poems both of the ancient tradition (the Iliad and Odyssey) and of Ovid's own day (the Aeneid). It begins with the ritual "invocation of the muse", and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlocutions. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human hero, it leaps from story to story with little connection, with little more than token attention to the epic themes of great deeds, national glory and religious observance.


Instead, the recurring theme, as with nearly all of Ovid's work, is that of love—personal love or love personified as Amor (Cupid). Indeed, the other Roman gods are repeatedly perplexed, humiliated, and made ridiculous by Amor, an otherwise relatively minor god of the pantheon who is the closest thing this mock-epic has to an epic hero. Apollo comes in for particular ridicule as Ovid shows how irrational love can confound the god of pure reason. While few individual stories are outright sacrilegious, the work as a whole inverts the accepted order, elevating humans and human passions while making the gods and their desires and conquests objects of low humor.

Inspirations and adaptations

★ The 1567 Arthur Golding translation of Metamorphoses was a considerable influence on English playwright William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's ''Romeo and Juliet'' is a clear adaptation of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe (Metamorphoses Book 4), and, in ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', a band of amateur actors performs a play about Pyramus and Thisbe. In Titus Andronicus the story of Lavinia's rape is drawn from Tereus' rape of Philomela, and the text of Metamorphoses is used within the play to enable Titus to interpret his daughter's story.

★ Composer Benjamin Britten wrote a 1951 piece for solo Oboe incorporating six of Ovid's mythical characters. In 2002, Author Mary Zimmerman adapted some of Ovid's myths into a play by the same title, and the open-air-theatre group London Bubble also adapted it in 2006. Naomi Iizuka's "Polaroid Stories" also bases its format off of Metamorphoses, setting the classic play in a modern time with drug-addicted, teenage versions of many of the characters from the original play.

★ In 1625, sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini finished his piece entitled Apollo and Daphne, taken from the episode in Book 1 in which Apollo, pierced by a love-inducing arrow from Cupid, pursues a fleeing nymph Daphne.

Manuscript tradition

Collaborative editorial effort has been investigating the various manuscripts of ''Metamorphoses'', some forty-five complete texts or substantial fragments,^[1] since the High Middle Ages; though early emendations made by readers based on comparisons of this popular text has resulted in contamination, so that there are no isolated manuscript traditions, the result of several centuries of critical reading is that the poet's meaning is firmly established on the basis of the manuscript tradition or restored by conjecture where the tradition is deficient. The modern critical editions are two: W. S. Anderson's, first published in 1977 in the Teubner series, and R. J. Tarrant's, published in 2004 by the Oxford Clarendon Press.

Notes

1. R. J. Tarrant, 2004. ''P. Ouidi Nasonis Metamorphoses.'' (Oxford Classical Texts_ Oxford: Clarendon Press: ''praefatio''.

See also

★ List of characters in Metamorphoses

★ Tales from Ovid - Ted Hughes' poetical work

External links

★ 'Latin text with English translation'

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★ Ovid Illustrated: The Renaissance Reception of Ovid in Image and Text (An elaborate environment allowing simultaneous access to Latin text, English translations, commentary from multiple sources along with wood cut illustrations by Virgil Solis.)

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★ ''Metamorphoses'' in Latin edition and English translations (From Perseus with hyperlinked commentary, mythological, and grammatical references)

★ 'Latin text'

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★ University of Virginia: Metamorphoses

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★ The Latin Library: P. OVIDI NASONIS OPERA

★ 'English translation'

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★ By A. S. Kline, 2000

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★ Poetry in Translation: Ovid: Metamorphoses. (Enhanced viewer with links and notes. Can be downloaded in different formats.)

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★ Mythology: Metamorphoses

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★ By Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden et al., 1717

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★ Internet Classics Archive: Ovid's ''Metamorphoses''

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★ Ovid's ''Metamorphoses''

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★ By Others:

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★ Elizabethan Authors: Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', trans. by Arthur Golding, 1567.

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★ Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' trans. by George Sandys, 1632.

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★ Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' trans. by Brooke Moore, 1922.

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★ TextKit: Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', Books I–IV, trans. Rev. Dr. Giles, a learning translation/crib in PDF graphic format.

★ 'Insight and commentary'

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★ The Ovid Project: Metamorphising the Metamorphoses (Illustrations by Johann Whilhelm Baur (1600–1640) and anonymous illustrations from George Sandy's edition of 1640.)

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★ ''A Honeycomb for Aphrodite'' by A. S. Kline

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★ Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', An introduction and commentary by Larry A. Brown.

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★ ''An Analytical Onomasticon'' to the ''Metamorphoses'' of Ovid (Concordance and narrative index.)