On Ovid's Metamorphoses

Ovid was hardly the first Greco-Roman writer to treat the theme of metamorphic myth, but his poem of transformation was itself transformative in the literary landscape of Augustus' Rome. Breathtakingly original in the scale of its intellectual and creative ambition, in many ways it changed the course of Latin literary history through the influence it exerted on successive generations of poets at Rome. From Late Antiquity onwards, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the Early Modern period and far beyond down to the present day, the work has stood the test of time as one of the most influential cultural legacies of ancient Rome. Gareth David Williams demonstrates how Ovid's Metamorphoses is not just a colorful collection of stories about change, but a study of change itself. Perspectives are constantly shifting, appearances deceive, and reality is always a work in progress. The motives that cause different characters to act as they do are often slippery, mixed, and hard to pin down. Williamsasks why this is, and explores what Ovid was aiming to achieve in creating this changeful world at the dawn of the first century CE. He also shows why Ovid speaks so eloquently of and to the modern moment. Williams is centrally concerned with the Metamorphoses as a text of our times. What work can the poem do with and for us now in the 21st century? How can it inform our experience amidst the uncertainties of modern life?--