A radical new interpretation of Picasso and his relation to the classical seen through the artist's prints of the 1930s.

The transformation of human beings to animals, plants, and stones is one of the commonest and most characteristic themes of Greek mythology; whereas many cultures contain some such stories, in none are they so popular as in the Greek myths. Transformations are also some of the most mysterious and fantastic episodes in Greek mythology. Given the intriguing nature of the subject-matter, it is surprising that no study of these stories has ever appeared in English. But this book is unusual in its approach. Studies of Greek myths have usually tended to try to explain them away in terms of some external entity, whether it be some hypothetical ritual, some curious phenomenum of nature or some long-forgotten historical event. The book argues that this attitude ignores what is of most interest about Greek myths - their appeal as stories. The author analyses the various ways in which these stories imagine and explore what it means for a person to change his or her form.

An illustrated study of a number of Greek myths about the transformations of humans and gods. Richard Buxton poses the question of how seriously the Greeks took these tales, and in doing so also illuminates issues explored by anthropologists and students of religion.

The impact of Ovid's Metamorphoses on our culture can hardly be overestimated. The poem is one of the most exciting and accessible classical texts, our key source for nearly all the famous myths of Greece and Rome. Sarah Annes Brown offers a lively, and sometimes provocative, introduction to the Metamorphoses, exploring the impact of recent critical developments and tracing its rich afterlife in both high and popular culture. The book's later chapters are devoted to five of the most memorable Ovidian stories - Apollo and Daphne, Actaeon, Philomela, Arachne and Pygmalion. Each subtle and elusive story is found to have generated a huge range of creative responses. The influence of the Pygmalion myth, for example, can be traced in Frankenstein, Vertigo and Blade Runner, as well as in the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare.

The myth of Orpheus, shaman and teacher, musician and lover, is the subject of this book. It brings together the work of scholars from a variety of disciplines to present a conspectus of the myth's career, to show how it grows and changes to meet changing demands -- always different, yet always the same. Early Greek evidence for the Orpheus myth and a speculative explanation of its origins are offered along with chapters on the treatments of the myth by Virgil and Ovid, on Orpheus and Christianity, and on the allegorizing treatment of Orpheus which characterizes the Middle Ages. Orpheus in the Renaissance is studied in the work of the philosopher Marsilio Ficino; in Italian art from 1400 to 1600; in operas by Peri and Monteverdi; in a religious allegorical play by Calderon; and in the writings of Spenser, Milton, and Bacon. The Orpheus myth has been crucial in the defining of a culture. Its history demonstrates effectively the persistence and plasticity of myth.