About this title: The first English translation of one of the supreme masterpieces of Latin literature, "Golding's Metamorphoses" (1567) decisively influenced Shakespeare, Spenser and the character of English Renaissance writing. 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. This robustly vernacular version adds a Christian moral framework, clarifies obscurities and gives an English flavour to the rustic settings, ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1955
ISBN-13:9780140440584ISBN:0140440585
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Ex-lib, one inch cut from cover. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 368 p. Penguin Classics. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: New American Library
Date Published: 1960
ISBN-13:9780451622174ISBN:0451622170
Description: Gay, Zhenya. Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Pages tanned, text clean. Title page and inside of front cover stamped. Wrinkles from moisture to several pages, edges soiled. Cover has scuffs, scratches, creases, discoloration and edge wear. Spine is creased and... Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 448 p. Includes illustrations. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780192834720ISBN:019283472X
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 528 p. Oxford World's Classics (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. The edges are dingy but otherwise it is in great, gently used condition. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1955
ISBN-13:9780140440584ISBN:0140440585
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover shows moderate wear; name stamped on bio page, some words underlined in Table of Contents, remaining pages appear unmarked; tanned throughout. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Signet, E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1960
ISBN-13:9780451626226ISBN:0451626222
Description: Good. 0451626222 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Research & Education Association
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780878910274ISBN:0878910271
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
"Do not look to this book as though it was an anthology of Gods from many years back. Ovid was a tortured man by the time that he got to work and finished his wonderful collection of imaginative transformations, and reading between the stories, one can feel his isolation and rage for the powers that were at the time. This book is great for the analysis of a history; this narrative poem is compiled so nicely and written so brilliantly that there is much to be learned about the life and times of the Roman Empire surrounding the dawning of Christ. Keep in mind that deep analysis should play a major part in your deciphering of the words that Ovid pieced together in order to take the most away from this classic."
"I think this is a fantastic work. I can't speak to it from a translation standpoint; I don't know Latin. However, after reading the translator's rationale, and then reading the book, I was much more moved than I was reading the older Mary Innes translation. I wish my grasp of the more "minor" tales had been better so that I could have really enjoyed Ovid's incessant name-dropping; instead, it became a constant movement back and forth between the lines, the notes, and the glossary. I don't think this translation would work well for the casual reader, but if you're into the idea of reading Ovid, this is the translation you want."
""While Ceres was a-eating this, before her gazing stood A hard fast boy, a shrewd pert wag that could no manners good; He laugh`ed at her and in scorn did call her greedy gut."
I read the Arthur Golding translation from 1567. This was somewhat trying and became a bit of a test of endurance over time. On the other hand the language, at least in this edition, seems quite modern. There is a glossary for the unfamiliar words, but I didn't need to use it very often.
On the whole I did find reading it rewarding. I read substantial portions of it aloud. The whole thing is written in fourteeners which at times would get rather drowsy in a dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum kind of way. However, attention to meter is one of my weaker points in reading poetry so I was looking for something with regular meter to help me track it. There was also a lot of complexity at times with the way that the semantic stress of sentances overlay the natural rythm of the lines, particularly because they are such long lines that they tend to have a rythm that wants to read like a sentence. The lines are also rymed in pairs. I definitely feel that though still quite an amateur in these matters the reading of this whole book with these constant auditory cues has helped me to be more attuned to this level of craftsmanship in poetry but I suppose the final judgment on that will have to come when I try to read something else.
As for the content, I found it to be somewhat similar. The stories were for the most part entertaining but there is a similar effect to plodding rythm in the repetition of certain elements. A lot of people were turned into trees, birds, or for the occaisonal variation, flowers. There are also at times passages that really had very little interest to me and I must admit I skimmed. There weren't very many of these. There is also a bit of the geneology type stuff that can get old in terms of someone being the related to some god or another this way or that.
Of course it is was also rewarding in that these stories form the backbone of much of western culture. It's amazing for me to think at times about the fact that these stories were ancient Greek folk tales that had been recast by a first century AD Roman poet, translated by a 16th century Englishman, and being read by me a person in 21st century America. Furthermore, this being the version of Ovid that Shakespeare read, that these stories have impacted western culture and me in a deep way through that poets work as well. This was driven home for me particularly in noticing the parallel between the story of Pyramus and Thisbe and Romeo and Juliet, although I had know this story long ago.
At it's best, interesting stories flow seamlessly into one another. At it's worst it can be a plod of uninteresting details and material without much narrative form. On the whole worth the work."
"This translation (by David Slavitt) has beautiful imagery and descriptive language. He also really captures the "read-aloud" feel of this epic poem.
Each story is connected to the one before it and after it, sometimes by the thinnest of threads, but Ovid manages to make them all flow together in a (mostly) logical order. The theme of changing (metamorphoses) shines through every tale. Most, if not all, of the stories had some unfortunate turning into an animal or a tree or turned to stone by Medusa's head. So many characters and relationships between them that it's hard (if not impossible) to keep them all straight.
I had forgotten how much of Greek and Roman mythology is based on rape and violence. Lots of rape. And very gory explicit violence. The gods were some of the worst offenders on both counts - talk about a sense of entitlement. I always wondered what it reveals about a culture that their gods were so capricious, self-centered, vindictive and inconstant."
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