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Library | Call Number | Material Type | Home Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Library | PA6537 .C28 2001 | Adult Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Area | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Ovid was one of the greatest writers of classical antiquity, and arguably the single most influential ancient poet for post-classical literature and culture. In this Cambridge Companion, chapters by leading authorities from Europe and North America discuss the backgrounds and contexts for Ovid, the individual works, and his influence on later literature and art. Coverage of essential information is combined with exciting critical approaches. This Companion is designed both as an accessible handbook for the general reader who wishes to learn about Ovid, and as a series of stimulating essays for students of Latin poetry and of the classical tradition.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
Ovid's career typifies the human condition so much that he has even been dubbed postmodern, as perhaps evidenced best by Mary Zimmerman's recent visionary Broadway staging of Metamorphoses. The 17 contributors to this highly polished collection provide 20 authoritative and compelling chapters on a host of key considerations, among them biography, contextual materials, imperial concerns with regard to authority, and issues of religion and gender (sex). Other topics treated include mythology, aesthetics, and landscape; separate chapters look at the major divisions and subjects of Ovid's work--the amatory, epical, narrative, and the political and social. Yet others provide extended critical commentary on the reception of Ovid's works, with particular attention to translation and adaptation in the medieval and Renaissance context and to inspired reworkings found in modern art and poetry. Along with a handy dateline on Ovid's life and works and a brief biography of contributors, a robust 28-page bibliography rounds out this eminently useful volume, which should be on the reference shelf of every library supporting work by Latinists, medievalists, and Renaissance scholars interested in the consummate Roman poet. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduates, researchers, and faculty. R. Cormier Longwood University
Table of Contents
| List of illustrations | p. x |
| List of contributors | p. xii |
| Preface | p. xvi |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Part 1 Contexts and history | |
| 1 Ovid and ancient literary history | p. 13 |
| 2 Ovid and early imperial literature | p. 34 |
| 3 Ovid and empire | p. 46 |
| 4 Ovid and the professional discourses of scholarship, religion, rhetoric | p. 62 |
| Part 2 Themes and works | |
| 5 Ovid and genre: evolutions of an elegist | p. 79 |
| 6 Gender and sexuality | p. 95 |
| 7 Myth in Ovid | p. 108 |
| 8 Landscape with figures: aesthetics of place in the Metamorphoses and its tradition | p. 122 |
| 9 Ovid and the discourses of love: the amatory works | p. 150 |
| 10 Metamorphosis in the Metamorphoses | p. 163 |
| 11 Narrative technique and narratology in the Metamorphoses | p. 180 |
| 12 Mandati memores: political and poetic authority in the Fasti | p. 200 |
| 13 Epistolarity: the Heroides | p. 217 |
| 14 Ovid's exile poetry: Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto and Ibis | p. 233 |
| Part 3 Reception | |
| 15 Ovid in English translation | p. 249 |
| 16 Ovid in the Middle Ages: authority and poetry | p. 264 |
| 17 Love and exile after Ovid | p. 288 |
| 18 Re-embodying Ovid: Renaissance afterlives | p. 301 |
| 19 Recent receptions of Ovid | p. 320 |
| 20 Ovid and art | p. 336 |
| Dateline | p. 368 |
| Works cited | p. 371 |
| Index | p. 399 |