Metamorphoses

In his award-winning translation, Charles Martin combines fidelity to Ovid&rsquo;s text with verse that catches the speed and liveliness of the original.</p> <p> Ovid&rsquo;s epic poem&#151;whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages&#151;is one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante&rsquo;s time to the present, when writers such as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino have found a living source in Ovid&rsquo;s work. The text is accompanied by a preface, A Note on the Translation, and detailed explanatory annotations.<br /><br />&ldquo;Sources and Backgrounds&rdquo; includes Seneca&rsquo;s inspired commentary on Ovid, Charles Martin&rsquo;s essay on the ways in which pantomimic dancing&#151;an art form popular in Ovid&rsquo;s time&#151;may have been the model for <i>Metamorphoses</i>, as well as related works by Virgil, Callimachus, Hesiod, and Lucretius, among others.<br /><br />From the enormous body of scholarly writing on <i>Metamorphoses</i>, Charles Martin has chosen six major interpretations by Bernard Knox, J. R. R. Mackail, Norman O. Brown, Italo Calvino, Frederick Ahl, and Diane Middlebrook.<br /><br />A Glossary of Persons, Places, and Personifications in the <i>Metamorphoses</i> and a Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.</p>