Ovid

In the first century a.d., Ovid, author of the groundbreaking epic poem Metamorphoses, came under severe criticism for The Art of Love, which playfully instructed women in the art of seduction and men in the skills essential for mastering the art of romantic conquest. In this remarkable translation, James Michie breathes new life into the notorious Roman’s mock-didactic elegy. In lyrical, irreverent English, he reveals love’s timeless dilemmas and Ovid’s enduring brilliance as both poet and cultural critic.

The Art of Love

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is one of the most influential works of Western literature, inspiring artists and writers from Titian to Shakespeare to Salman Rushdie. These are some of the most famous Roman myths as you’ve never read them before—sensuous, dangerously witty, audacious—from the fall of Troy to birth of the minotaur, and many others that only appear in the Metamorphoses. Connected together by the immutable laws of change and metamorphosis, the myths tell the story of the world from its creation up to the transformation of Julius Caesar from man into god. In the ten-beat, unrhymed lines of this now-legendary and widely praised translation, Rolfe Humphries captures the spirit of Ovid’s swift and conversational language, bringing the wit and sophistication of the Roman poet to modern readers. This special annotated edition includes new, comprehensive commentary and notes by Joseph D. Reed, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Brown University.

The New, Annotated Edition

Metamorphoses

Seher Mohsin

Publius Ovidius Naso

A new translation in hexameter verse of Ovid's narrative poem embraces more than two hundred mythical tales linked by the theme of transformation, incorporating many famed myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome.

Metamorphosis

Wynter

Ovid is a naughty, naughty man. Oh, and a pretty awesome poet, that too... I think I will be reading his entire bibliography one day.

Ted Hughes

A powerful version of the Latin classic by England's late Poet Laureate, now in paperback.When it was published in 1997, Tales from Ovid was immediately recognized as a classic in its own right, as the best rering of Ovid in generations, and as a major book in Ted Hughes's oeuvre. The Metamorphoses of Ovid stands with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton as a classic of world poetry; Hughes translated twenty-four of its stories with great power and directness. The result is the liveliest twentieth-century version of the classic, at once a delight for the Latinist and an appealing introduction to Ovid for the general reader.

24 Passages from the Metamorphoses

Tales from Ovid

Haylie

Greek mythology not only is difficult to read but it gets kind of old very quickly. The stories of how such and such character thought they were better than the gods was very tiresome by the end of Niobe. I just wish that Medea was placed in here to liven things up a bit.

Анастасия Розова

*Read for class.

2.75/5

This one is hard to rate... I liked the writing, it was easy to read and sort of fun, but also the topic itself is so controversial? Advice for people who are married (!) on how to seduce other people. And also, of course, on how people should look, laugh, talk and fucking walk. Fuck you, patriarchy!

Other than that, if we won't take it too seriously and remember the times... It's readable. Even interesting.

Maytal

I've been a fan of Greek myths since reading Edith Hamilton's Mythology when I was a kid and this was a fun revisit and also my first foray into Ovid. Metamorphoses was full of passion, comedy, and also had some truly gruesome bits that made me wince - centaur massacre, anyone? I loved feeling connected to people over 2,000 years ago and would recommend this to anyone.

Ovid's magnificent panorama of the Greek and Roman myths-presented by a noted poet, scholar, and critic. Prized through the ages for its splendor and its savage, sophisticated wit, The Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of Western culture-the first attempt to link all the Greek myths, before and after Homer, in a cohesive whole, to the Roman myths of Ovid's day. Horace Gregory, in this modern translation, turns his own poetic gifts toward a deft reconstruction of Ovid's ancient themes, using contemporary idiom to bring to today's reader all the ageless drama and psychological truths vividly intact.

Leonie

I am happy to own a wonderful, leather-bound copy of this and I intended to read it as a long-term project, but instead incorporated it in my first round of the 75 Hard Challenge and read it in about 2,5 to 3 weeks. This is wonderful. It is not an easy read, it requires a bit of work by the reader to keep track of the symbols and multiple names of deities and entities, but if you are familiar with the greek mythology it might be easy for you, once you get the hang of transferring it to the roman mythology. I truly enjoyed reading the different myths and stories and it opened a whole new world of books to me, because I now am able to identify the similarities in a lot of more modern literature that is based on these works. Also, seeing the different ways to portrait the deities in greek and roman mythology and comparing it to each other was a lot of fun to me. I was lucky enough to have a friend who studied a lot of greek and roman depictions and was able to discuss with me, which added a lot more depth to my perception of this work - I'll advise anyone interested to do a buddy-read, if that is your kind of thing. 

Jeni Enjaian

It's hard to write a review of a book like this. This narrative is far different than modern storytelling. Ovid wrote at a time when the primary method for conveying narrative was oral. This is patently obvious in the way that Ovid's narrative flows without end from story to story to story (and etc) introducing characters, telling a bit of their life story and quickly moving on to the next character without giving any resolution to the character that came before. 
It also helped to have a bit of familiarity with most of these myths. (Rick Riordan has definitely done his research. :D)
Overall, this was a decent book and if one has an affinity for Greek and Roman mythology then it's a must read. Otherwise, the oral tradition tendency of the book might put off a casual reader.

Die Metamorphosen sind das Opus Magnum Ovids und gelten neben der Aeneis Vergils als das bedeutendste literarische Werk der römischen Antike. Die rund 250 Verwandlungssagen, die Ovid in seinem epischen Gedicht verarbeitethat, sind von berauschender stofflicher Vielfalt und reichen bis zu den Mythen der Urzeit zurück. Die unerhört lebendige Anschaulichkeit, mit der die Verwandlungen von Göttern und Menschen, Tieren und Pflanzen geschildert werden, machen die Metamorphosen zu einem der schönsten Bücher der Weltliteratur.

Metamorphosen

Als Langzeitprojekt gedacht, wurden Ovids Metamorphosen überraschend Teil meiner 75hardchallenge und begleiteten mich so über die ersten 2,5 Wochen jeden Tag. Ich fand große Freude daran und erkannte vieles wieder, das mir vorher nicht im Zusammenhang mit anderen Teilen bekannt war und doch, sobald einmal gelesen, sehr klare Verbundenheit zeigte. 

Ich habe sehr viel aus diesem kleinen Projekt mitnehmen können, besitze eine wunderschöne Ausgabe und werde sie sicherlich immer wieder zur Hand nehmen.

Mirto

Novel Ideas

E. J. Kenney

Ovid,

A. D. Melville

The modern, unacademic idiom of A.D. Melville's translation opens the way to a fresh understanding of Ovid's unique and elusive vision of reality.

Lotus

Jackson Weaver

lala

Sherry

Jim Hagan

lily

Allison Dempsey

When Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun's ground-breaking anthology After Ovid (also Faber) was published in 1995, Hughes's three contributions to the collective effort were nominated by most critics as outstanding. He had shown that rare translator's gift for providing not just an accurate account of the original, but one so thoroughly imbued with his own qualities that it was as if Latin and English poetwere somehow the same person. Tales from Ovid, which went on to win the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, continued the project of recreation with 24 passages, including the stories of Phaeton, Actaeon, Echo and Narcissus, Procne, Midas and Pyramus and Thisbe. In them, Hughes's supreme narrative and poetic skills combine to produce a book that stands, alongside his Crow and Gaudete, as an inspired addition to the myth-making of our time.

The Art of Love

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