Metamorphoses (World's Classics)

by Ovid (Author), Ovid (Author), E. J. Kenney (Editor), A. D. Melville (Translator)

• Used

  Paperback
  1987

  $3.29

  Metamorphoses--the best-known poem by one of the wittiest poets of classical antiquity--takes as its theme change and transformation, as illustrated by Greco-Roman myth and legend. Melville's new translation reproduces the grace and fluency of Ovid's style, and its modern idiom offers a fresh understanding of Ovid's unique and elusive vision of reality.

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $4.24

  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.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1986

  $23.93

  At the center of The Metamorphoses, a work thought by many to be the wittiest poem by the wittiest author of antiquity, lies the theme of change and transformation. Composed of a series of kaleidoscopic narratives in which human and divine characters meet with paradoxical and always arbitrary fates, The Metamorphoses is alternately humorous, pathetic and bizarre, but always surprising and entertaining. A. D. Melville's translation admirably reproduces the grace and fluidity of Ovid's style, with the subtle addition, for occasional special effect, of rhyming couplets to the traditional blank verse form.

• New

  Paperback
  1955

  $11.74

  Mary Innes's classic prose translation of one of the supreme masterpieces of Latin literature, Ovid's Metamorphosis. Ovid drew on Greek mythology, Latin folklore and legend from ever further afield to create a series of narrative poems, ingeniously linked by the common theme of transformation. Here a chaotic universe is subdued into harmonious order: animals turn to stone; men and women become trees and stars. Ovid himself transformed the art of storytelling, infusing these stories with new life through his subtley, humour and understanding of human nature, and elegantly tailoring tone and pace to fit a variety of subjects. The result is a lasting treasure-house of myth and legend. 'The most beautiful book in the language (my opinion and I suspect it was Shakespeare's)' - Ezra Pound Ovid was born in 43 BC in central Italy. He was sent to Rome where he realised that his talent lay with poetry rather than with politics. His first published work was 'Amores', a collection of short love poems. He was expelled in A.D. 8 by Emperor Augustus for an unknown reason and went to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he died in AD 17. Mary M. Innes graduated from Glasgow and Oxford Universities and subsequently taught in the universities of Belfast and Aberdeen, before spending some twenty years proving to schoolgirls that classical languages can and should be enjoyed.