An important collection of essays on Ovid's Metamorphoses and its reception.

This book highlights Ovid's influence on important later Latin authors writing from the fourth to the sixth centuries in Europe and Africa.

Metamorphic Readings presents a set of original interpretations of Ovid's seminal Metamorphoses and its reception in later literature, representing the state of the art of research on the poem and enhancing the suggestiveness of Ovid's masterpiece.

This collection of original essays uses contemporary theory to examine Renaissance writers' reworking of Ovid's texts in order to analyze the strategies in the construction of the early modern discourses of gender, sexuality, and writing.

The author's predecessors focus almost exclusively on the Metamorphoses as intertext, but do not often distinguish between early modern Latin editions of the poem and translations such as Arthur Golding's. Although Spenser read Ovid in his native language, during the quarter-century of his writing career, his countrymen such as Shakespeare, Donne, and Lodge imitate and recast the ancient author. During this English aetas Ovidiana, a translation industry arises simultaneously so that the entire corpus is rendered into English, from Golding's Metamorphoses (1567) to Wye Saltonstall's Ex Ponto (1638). Since the sixteenth century did not often read or hear a Roman poet in prose renditions, the author uses Renaissance poetical verse translations (with the Latin text) to explore Spenser's variegated use of Ovid: how he sounded as early modern English poetry.

A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid presents more than 30 original essays written by leading scholars revealing the rich diversity of critical engagement with Ovid’s poetry that spans the Western tradition from antiquity to the present day. Offers innovative perspectives on Ovid’s poetry and its reception from antiquity to the present day Features contributions from more than 30 leading scholars in the Humanities. Introduces familiar and unfamiliar figures in the history of Ovidian reception. Demonstrates the enduring and transformative power of Ovid’s poetry into modern times.