WINNER OF THE HAROLD MORTON LANDON TRANSLATION AWARD FROM THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS
Praise for Charles Martin's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses:
"Long awaited, and likely to become the new standard." - Washington Post
"Among the accomplished translations of Ovid in our day, this version of the Metamorphoses by Charles Martin–elegant, witty, and exuberant by turns, and epic in its span from the creation of the world to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar–should now lay claim to its own distinguished ground." - Robert Fagles
"This translation of the Metamorphoses is all that one could wish: smoothly readable, accurate, charming, subtle yet clear. Charles Martin, deservedly admired as poet and translator both, has given us a lucidly fluent version of this most flowing of poems." - Richard Wilbur
Including "Ovid in His Time and Ours" by Bernard Knox
Ovid’s epic poem―whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages―is one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante’s time to the present, when writers such as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino have found a living source in Ovid’s work. The text is accompanied by a preface, A Note on the Translation, and detailed explanatory annotations.
“Sources and Backgrounds” includes Seneca’s inspired commentary on Ovid, Charles Martin’s essay on the ways in which pantomimic dancing―an art form popular in Ovid’s time―may have been the model for Metamorphoses, as well as related works by Virgil, Callimachus, Hesiod, and Lucretius, among others.
From the enormous body of scholarly writing on Metamorphoses, Charles Martin has chosen six major interpretations by Bernard Knox, J. R. R. Mackail, Norman O. Brown, Italo Calvino, Frederick Ahl, and Diane Middlebrook.
A Glossary of Persons, Places, and Personifications in the Metamorphoses and a Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
