Originally published in 1955, this introductory text was created for the general reader or students of the classics seeking a greater understanding of Ovid.

Ovid's poetry is haunted obsessively by a sense both of the living fullness of the texts and of the emptiness of these 'insubstantial pageants'. This major study touches on the whole of Ovid's output, from the Amores to the exile poetry, and is an overarching treatment of illusionism and the textual conjuring of presence in the corpus. Modern critical and theoretical approaches, accompanied by close readings of individual passages, examine the topic from the points of view of poetics and rhetoric, aesthetics, the psychology of desire, philosophy, religion and politics. There are also case studies of the reception of Ovid's poetics of illusion in Renaissance and modern literature and art. The book will interest students and scholars of Latin and later European literatures. All foreign languages are accompanied by translations.

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

The first complete commentary in English on Ovid's Metamorphoses, covering textual interpretation, poetics, imagination, and ideology.

This is the first intermediate-student edition of a selection from Ovid's Heroides. Heroides VI, lines 1–100 and 127–64, and Heroides X, lines 1–76 and 119–50 are included as Latin text with an accompanying commentary and vocabulary. Focusing on a deliberately limited number of poems, this edition is designed to be manageable for students reading the text for the first time while also perfectly encapsulating the interest of Ovid's other work and inspiring further study of it. A detailed introduction explains points of historical and stylistic interest, encompassing the full text of both poems, including sections omitted here from the Latin, and also Heroides IV. The heroines of the Heroides are women in love who can do nothing but write sad verse letters to their faithless lovers across the sea. They tell their stories and express their feelings in poetry of great power and psychological subtlety. Hypsipyle (in VI) and Ariadne (in X) are feminists before feminism, royal ladies who are slaves to their passion – these women are given a voice by Ovid in poetry which is at once simple and sophisticated, heartfelt and yet also full of irony and literary resonance.

This is the OCR-endorsed publication from Bloomsbury for the Latin A-Level (Group 4) prescription of Ovid's Heroides, giving full Latin text, commentary and vocabulary for Heroides I lines 1–68, and Heroides VII lines 1–140, with a detailed introduction that also covers the prescribed text to be read in English. Ovid's Heroides is a unique collection of poetry, in which famous mythological heroines write letters to the men who have abandoned them. They offer a new perspective on the otherwise male-centred mythological tradition. Heroides I (from Penelope) and VII (from Dido) respond to the most famous Classical epics, Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, by presenting a new, less positive, angle on the two famous epic heroes. Through his heroines' unique voices, Ovid plays with literary tradition, inviting us all to take a side: epic heroism or loyalty in love? Resources are available on the Companion Website.

Ovid: The Classical Heritage, first published in 1995, contains a diverse collection of reflections on a poet who has been adored and reviled in equal measure. Each essay indicates an theme or perspective which remains relevant to our self-understanding today. An enormous range of topics is investigated, in a variety of modes and styles: contemporary reaction, reception by Medieval Schoolmen, Ovid’s influence on Chaucer, and his importance for the ‘New Mythologists’.