A stimulating investigation of some of Ovid's source-material.

Wheeler proposes instead that Ovid represents himself in the poem as an epic storyteller moved to tell a universal history of metamorphosis in the presence of a fictional audience.

This introduction to Ovid's Metamorphoses considers how Ovid defined and shaped his narrative, its cultural context, and its vivid depictions of the cruelty of jealous gods, the pathos of human love, and the imaginative fantasy of flight, monsters, magicand illusion.

Brings the Amores into the forefront of scholarly discussion

Perhaps no other classical text has proved its versatility so much as Ovid's epic poem. A staple of undergraduate courses in Classical Studies, Latin, English and Comparative Literature, Metamorphoses is arguably one of the most important, canonical Latin texts and certainly among the most widely read and studied. Ovid's 'Metamorphoses': A Reader's Guide is the ideal companion to this epic classical text offering guidance on: • Literary, historical and cultural context • Key themes • Reading the text • Reception and influence • Further reading

This book considers the relationship between the Fasti, Ovid's long poem on the Roman calendar, and the calendar itself, conceived of as consisting both in the rites and commemorations it organizes and in its graphic representation. The Fasti treats the calendar, recently revised by Caesar and Augustus, as its most important cultural model and as a quasi-literary 'intertext': the poem simultaneously reshapes and is itself shaped by the calendar. The study includes chapters on Book 4 and the rites of April, on the addition of Julio-Claudian holidays to the calendar, and on the final two books of the poem as shaped by the renaming of the months Quintilis and Sextilis for Julius Caesar and Augustus.