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Metamorphoses

This article is about the poem. For other uses, see Metamorphoses (disambiguation).
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Cover of George Sandys's 1632 edition of Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished


The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world, drawing from Greek and Roman mythological traditions. Probably written between 2 and 8 CE, it has remained one of the most popular works of mythology, being the Classical work best known to medieval writers and thus having a great deal of influence on medieval poetry.

Content

Ovid emphasizes tales of transformation often found in myths, in which a person or lesser deity is permanently transformed into an animal or plant. The poem begins with the transformations of creation and Prometheus metamorphizing earth into Man and ends with the transformation of the spirit of Julius Caesar into a star. Ovid goes from one to the other by working his way through mythology, often in apparently arbitrary fashion, jumping from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek myth and sometimes straying in odd directions. The poem is often called a mock-epic. It is written in dactylic hexameter, the form of the great heroic and nationalistic epic poems both of the ancient tradition (the Iliad and Odyssey) and of Ovid's own day (the Aeneid). It begins with the ritual "invocation of the muse", and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlocutions. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human hero, it leaps from story to story with little connection, with little more than token attention to the epic themes of great deeds, national glory and religious observance.

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Titian's Danaë, one of innumerable paintings inspired by the Metamorphoses.
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Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, an iconic sculpture based on Ovid's Metamorphoses.


Instead, the recurring theme, as with nearly all of Ovid's work, is that of love—personal love or love personified as Amor (Cupid). Indeed, the other Roman gods are repeatedly perplexed, humiliated, and made ridiculous by Amor, an otherwise relatively minor god of the pantheon who is the closest thing this mock-epic has to an epic hero. Apollo comes in for particular ridicule as Ovid shows how irrational love can confound the god of pure reason. While few individual stories are outright sacrilegious, the work as a whole inverts the accepted order, elevating humans and human passions while making the gods and their desires and conquests objects of low humor.

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Apollo and Daphne by Antonio Pollaiuolo, one tale of transformation in the Metamorphoses—he lusts after her and she escapes him by turning into a bay laurel.

Inspirations and adaptations

The Metamorphoses was a considerable influence on English playwright William Shakespeare; however, claims that The 1567 Arthur Golding translation of the Metamorphoses greatly influenced Shakespeare are flimsily evidenced. Shakespeare incorporates several details from the Metamorphoses into his work that weren't in Golding's translation, so it can be safely assumed that Shakespeare did read the Latin Metamorphoses himself, as opposed to completely relying on Golding's translation . Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a clear adaptation of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe (Metamorphoses Book 4), and, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a band of amateur actors performs a play about Pyramus and Thisbe. In Titus Andronicus the story of Lavinia's rape is drawn from Tereus' rape of Philomela, and the text of Metamorphoses is used within the play to enable Titus to interpret his daughter's story.

Manuscript tradition

Collaborative editorial effort has been investigating the various manuscripts of Metamorphoses, some forty-five complete texts or substantial fragments,[2] since the High Middle Ages; though early emendations made by readers based on comparisons of this popular text has resulted in contamination, so that there are no isolated manuscript traditions, the result of several centuries of critical reading is that the poet's meaning is firmly established on the basis of the manuscript tradition or restored by conjecture where the tradition is deficient. The modern critical editions are two: W. S. Anderson's, first published in 1977 in the Teubner series, and R. J. Tarrant's, published in 2004 by the Oxford Clarendon Press.

Notes

1. ^ under "About this Recording" at bottom left. Keith Anderson, liner notes for The 18th Century Symphony: Dittersdorf: Sinfonias on Ovid's Metamorphoses Nos. 1 - 3, 1995
2. ^ R. J. Tarrant, 2004. P. Ouidi Nasonis Metamorphoses. (Oxford Classical Texts_ Oxford: Clarendon Press: praefatio.

See also

External links

Metamorphoses is a poem by Ovid.

Metamorphoses can also refer to:
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Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea.
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Ovid

Ovid as imagined in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493.
Born: March 20, 43 BC
Sulmo
Died: 17 AD
Tomis
Occupation: Poet
Influences: Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, William Shakespeare

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Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story. The poems may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective verse and regular rhyme scheme and meter.
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
This article has been tagged since September 2007.

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History is the study of the past, focused on human activity and leading up to the present day.[1] More precisely, history is the continuous, systematic narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race [1]
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Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the Ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices.
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Roman mythology, the mythological beliefs of the people of Ancient Rome, can be considered as having two parts. One part, largely later and literary, consists of whole-cloth borrowings from Greek mythology.
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The word mythology (from the Greek μύθολογία mythología, from μυθολογείν mythologein
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In Greek mythology, Prometheus (ancient Greek: Προμηθεύς, "forethought") is a Titan known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals for their use.
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Gaius Julius Caesar
Dictator of the Roman Republic

Reign October, 49 BC–March 15, 44 BC
Full name Gaius Julius Caesar
Born 12 July 100 BC - 102 BC
Rome, Roman Republic
Died 15 March 44 BC (aged 57)
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Dactylic hexameter (also known as "heroic hexameter") is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin.
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For other meanings of epic, see .
The epic is long, exalted narrative poetry, generally concerning a serious subject and details the heroic deeds and events important to a culture or nation.
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iLiad is an electronic handheld device, or e-book device, which can be used for document reading and editing. Like the Sony Reader, the iLiad makes use of an electronic paper display.

Description

Main specifications:
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The Odyssey (Greek Οδύσσεια (Odússeia)) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to the Ionian poet Homer. The poem is commonly dated circa 800 to circa 600 BC.
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Aeneid (IPA English pronunciation: [əˈniːɪd]; in Latin Aeneis, pronounced [aɪˈne.
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Cupid (Latin cupido) or Eros is the god of erotic love and sex. He is equated with the Greek god Eros, and another one of his Latin names Amor (cognate with Kama).
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In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo (in Greek, Ἀπόλλων — Apóllōn or Ἀπέλλων — Apellōn), the ideal of the kouros
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William Shakespeare

The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Born: April 1564 (exact date unknown)
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died: 23 March 1616
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
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Arthur Golding (c. 1536 - c. 1605) was an English translator.

He was the son of Jonathon Golding of Belchamp St Paul and Halsted, Essex, an auditor of the Exchequer, and was probably born in London. His half-sister, Margaret, married John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford.
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Romeo and Juliet
Author William Shakespeare
Country  United Kingdom
Language Unstandardised English
Genre(s) Tragedy
Publisher
Publication date

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Pyramus and Thisbe, not really a part of Roman mythology, is actually a sentimental romance. It is recounted by Hyginus (Fabulae 242) but is better told by Ovid (Metamorphoses 4).
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A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare written sometime in the 1590s. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke and Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta,
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Titus Andronicus, or The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus, may be Shakespeare's earliest tragedy. It depicts a fictional Roman general engaged in a cycle of revenge with his enemy Tamora, the Queen of the Goths.
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In Greek mythology, Tereus was a son of Ares and husband of Procne. Procne and Tereus had a son, Itys.

Tereus desired his wife's sister, Philomela. He forced himself upon her, then cut her tongue out and held her captive so she could never tell anyone.
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Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini; December 7, 1598 – November 28, 1680) was a pre-eminent Baroque sculptor and architect of 17th century Rome.
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Apollo and Daphne is a baroque, life-sized marble sculpture by Italian Gian Lorenzo Bernini, housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. It was inspired by one of the stories included in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
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In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo (in Greek, Ἀπόλλων — Apóllōn or Ἀπέλλων — Apellōn), the ideal of the kouros
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Cupid (Latin cupido) or Eros is the god of erotic love and sex. He is equated with the Greek god Eros, and another one of his Latin names Amor (cognate with Kama).
..... Click the link for more information.


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