Ovid's Metamorphoses [Paperback]

Ovid (Author), Madeleine Forey (Editor), Arthur Golding (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 2002

This landmark translation of Ovid was acclaimed by Ezra Pound as "the most beautiful book in the language (my opinion and I suspect it was Shakespeare's)". Ovid's deliciously witty and poignant epic starts with the creation of the world and brings together a series of ingeniously linked myths and legends in which men and women are transformed—often by love—into flowers, trees, stones, and stars. Golding's robustly vernacular version was the first major English translation and decisively influenced Shakespeare, Spenser, and the character of English Renaissance writing.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In the most daring translation in generations of Ovid's major work, Boer, rather than offering an Ovidian smooth, sustained flow, pares narrative to the bone; consider his Callisto: "But girl? against Jove? what god can?/ Jove the winner, home to heaven; & her? she hates/ woods now." Whittling this scene from Ovid's 95 lines to a spare 77, Boer is deliberately staccato and jerky, evoking the violence latent in Ovid's silky transformations. Inspiration here appears to be Poundian--like the Cantos, Boer's work tends toward lyric episodes. But against Pound's nuanced, sonorous cadences, Boer, in moments of weakness, achieves the economy of Tarzan with Jane: "Phoebus In Love: sees/ Daphne & wants sex; what he wants, he expects. . . ."-- Stephen Scully, Boston Univ.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

My research for a new book on the Elizabethans has made me all the more convinced of the centrality of translation to the flowering of English literature in that period... Especially welcome... [is] the Arthur Golding translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses... expertly edited by Madeleine Forey.

(Jonathan Bate Times Literary Supplement )

This is a very welcome publication of a major renaissance work, in a clear and well-organised edition, with a helpful critical introduction. It restores a widely-read work to its appropriate position as an affordable staple.

(Raphael Lyne Bryn Mawr Classical Review )

Madeleine Forey's edition of Golding's Ovid (which was Shakespeare's) is usefully modernized for the common reader, and is wonderfully introduced. The book is a timeless splendor.

(Harold Bloom )

Golding makes Ovid both dreamy and robust. Here we can listen to the English language as it moves confidently into the highest eloquence.

(Tom Paulin )

Dr. Forey, in an introduction of considerable scholarly value, is of course right to call it a 'central text.' Students of the English Renaissance will be delighted to have Golding's book in this accessible and well-edited form.

(Frank Kermode )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (March 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801870607
• ISBN-13: 978-0801870606
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,463,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, December 1, 2006

By 

Ian Schwartz (New England, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ovid's Metamorphoses (Dunquin Series) (Paperback)

It's a tragedy that as of this writing the other reviews for this work refer only to the audio edition, which is evidently crap. I assure you that the book itself is far from crap--that if you're looking for a different take on the classical world, a different voice that does not sound erudite and refined and prissy, Boer's translation is definitely worth a gander. I think of the narrator as an especially poetic caveman--alternately shouting and whispering language in its raw form, telling us many stories from classical mythology before a bonfire, omitting none of antiquity's horror or violence. This is not a dry encyclopedia of mythology ("Phaethon did this, and Phaethon did that after"), this is visceral beauty. Since the book is out of print and there's no preview availible, let me shut up and show you:

(Jove is tricking yet another beautiful maiden: he's turned himself into a bull)

Royal Girl Dares Climb Bull's Back!
(not knowing whom she rides); god dips
foot in water & drifts slowly from land & shore,
ambles further: then rushes his prey mid-sea:
scared seeing shoreline go, she clings
one hand to horns, one to his back; her dress
trembles & blows in the breeze

Many of the stories of the Metamorphoses are well-known and easily located online in duller formats, but this fiery translation has been utterly forgotten. Rare, unique, fun, and worthwhile.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Glorious English!, September 10, 2004

By 

Kenneth Williams (Richmond, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ovid's Metamorphoses (Paperback)

Of course it is for Golding's translation ITSELF that this book is valuable. You might ask yourself, who is the author of this Metamorphosis, Ovid or Golding? Is the book less artistically important because it is Golding's vision of Ovid rather than an unprocessed Ovid? Just feel how nice and chewy Golding's language is. Resentful academic purists should read Ovid in the original Latin.

2.0 out of 5 stars MISSING PAGES!!, June 23, 2010

By 

J. Mcgee (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ovid's Metamorphoses (Paperback)

THIS REVIEW APPLIES TO THE EDITION EDITED BY MADELEINE FOREY (Hopkins, 2002)

I own two copies of this book and in both it is missing pages! Specifically, it is missing pages 251-98, or parts of book 8 and 10 and all of book 9. I don't know if other people are also missing pages, but as I say I own two and they're identical. I like this edition in every other way and so to have discovered this is a major disappointment. The book appears only to have been printed once and so it's conceivable that all existing copies are missing these pages. If so, it is impossible for me to recommend.

Here are the stories my copies are missing in whole or part:

THE EIGHTH BOOK
Althaea's revenge -- Achelous and the nymphs -- Baucis and Philemon -- The sacrilege of Erysicthon -- Etysicthon's daughter
THE NINTH BOOK
Achelous and Hercules -- The shirt of Nessus -- The death of Hercules -- The transformation of Galantis -- The transformation of Dryope -- Iolaus recovers his youth -- Caun and Byblis --The transformation of Iphis
THE TENTH BOOK
Orpheus and Eurydice