Metamorphoses

By (author) Ovid; Translated by Raeburn, David; Introduction by Feeney Denis
Short description/annotation:
Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, this book interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.
Description:

Ovid''s deliciously clever and exuberant epic, now in a gorgeous new clothbound edition designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectable editions are bound in high-quality, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design

Ovid''s sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Erudite but light-hearted, dramatic yet playful, theMetamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes.

Ovid (43BC-18AD) was born at Sulmo (Sulmona) in central Italy. Coming from a wealthy Roman family and seemingly destined for a career in politics, he held minor official posts before leaving public service to write, becoming the most distinguished poet of his time. His works, all published in Penguin Classics, include Amores, a collection of short love poems; Heroides, verse-letters written by mythological heroines to their lovers; Ars Amatoria, a satirical handbook on love; and Metamorphoses, his epic work that has inspired countless writers and artists through the ages.

David Raeburn is a lecturer in Classics at Oxford, and has also translated Sophocles'' Electra and Other Plays for Penguin Classics.

Denis Feeney is Professor of Classics at Princeton.

Review quote:
“The true brilliance, that is, the true reading, the accessibility, of McCarter’s tapestry lies in her use of poetic form.(…) Throughout, McCarter produces gorgeous basso continuo undertones juxtaposed against sharp and high-pitched rhymes. Such formal elements of the translation ultimately represent McCarter’s interpretation of Metamorphoses and the art of translation itself—that humble human craft that has the capacity to stand against and despite the will of gods, power, and time. McCarter has produced her own masterpiece that ‘Jove’s wrath cannot / destroy, nor flame, nor steel, nor gnawing time.’ ‘My name,’ she writes, ‘can’t be erased.’” 
—Anna Deeny Morales, 2023 American Poets Prize citation for The Academy of American Poets

“The best translation of a work of ancient literature that I read this year was Stephanie McCarter''s marvellous new translation of Ovid''s Metamorphoses, in fresh, readable, vivid iambic pentameter. McCarter captures Ovid''s wit and cleverness, making us laugh at the escapades of abusive, lust-crazed, arrogant gods and hapless, also lust-crazed and arrogant mortals. But she also brilliantly evokes Ovid''s more serious sides, including his attentiveness to power and the magical vivacity of the natural world. Her wonderful handling of the metrical poetic form is a fitting match for Ovid''s artful, fluent Latin verse.”
—Emily Wilson, The New Statesman

“McCarter confronts the tricky issues associated with both the poet and his epic not only in her forthright introduction but in the translation itself, where, like an art restorer removing decades of brown