Product Description

The classic Elizabethan translation of the Roman masterpiece, now in a new edition.

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #540003 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-22
• Original language: Latin
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

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

About the Author
Madeleine Forey is a fellow of Oxford University's All Souls College.

Customer Reviews

Glorious English!
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.