Dimensions
128 x 198 x 22mm
Witty, erotic, sceptical and subversive, Ovid (c. 43BC - 17AD) has been a seminal presence in English literature from the time of Chaucer and Caxton to Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Arthur Golding's celebrated Renaissance version of the Metamorphoses, a key source of ancient myths, inspired writers from Shakespeare to Ezra Pound. Dryden and Marlowe produced highly influential translations, while Pope, Swift, Shelley and Matthew Arnold all wrote verse shot through with an Ovidian flavour. Our own century has responded deeply to his fascination with atrocity, abandoned women, constant change, extreme emotional states and the human instinct for survival. This superb selection brings together complete elegies from the Amores, Heroides and poems of exile as well as many self-contained episodes from the longer works, vividly revealing both the sheer variety of Ovid's genius and the range of his impact on the English imagination.
