Ovid Renewed Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century

This book is a study of Ovid and his poetry as a cultural phenomenon, conceived in the belief that such a study of tradition also casts fresh light on Ovid himself. Its main concern is with exploring the influence of Ovid on literature, especially English literature, but it also takes a wider perspective, including, for example, the visual arts. The book takes the form of a series of studies by specialists in their fields, including a number of scholars of international renown. The essays cover the period from the twelfth century, when there was an upsurge of interest in Ovid, through to the decline in his fortunes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are critical and comparative in approach and collectively give a detailed sense of Ovid's importance in Western culture. Topics covered include Ovid's influence on Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Dryden, T. S. Eliot, the myths of Daedalus and Icarus and Pygmalion, and the influence of Ovid's poetry on art.

List of plates; Contributors; Preface; 1. Introduction Charles Martindale; 2. Daedalus and Icarus (i) From Rome to the end of the Middle Ages Niall Rudd; 3. Daedalus and Icarus (ii) From the Renaissance to the present day Niall Rudd; 4. Ovid the Crusader C. W. Grocock; 5. Chaucer and Ovid: a question of authority Helen Cooper; 6. Lessons from the Great Clerk: Ovid and John Gower Bruce Harbert; 7. Original fictions: metamorphoses in The Faerie Queene Colin Burrow; 8. Ovid and the Elizabethans Laurence Lerner; 9. Ovid's Narcissus and Shakespeare's Richard II: the reflected self A. D. Nuttall; 10. Illustrating Ovid Nigel Llewellyn; 11. Dryden and Ovid's 'Wit out of season' David Hopkins; 12. The Heroides and the English Augustans Rachel Trickett; 13. Some versions of Pygmalion Jane M. Miller; 14. Ovid and the nineteenth century Norman Vance; 15. T. S. Eliot's Metamorphoses: Ovid and The Waste Land Stephen Medcalf; Appendix; Notes; Bibliography; Plates; Index of Ovidian passages; General index.

This book is a study of Ovid and his poetry as a cultural phenomenon, conceived in the belief that such a study of tradition also casts fresh light on Ovid himself. Its main concern is with exploring the influence of Ovid on literature, especially English literature, but it also takes a wider perspective, including, for example, the visual arts.