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Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics)
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Author: Ovid
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
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Our Price: $8.95
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Author: Ovid
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Average Customer Rating:
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Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 873.01
EAN: 9780192834720
ISBN: 019283472X
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 528
Publication Date: 1998-07-23
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Dewey Decimal Number: 873.01
EAN: 9780192834720
ISBN: 019283472X
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 528
Publication Date: 1998-07-23
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Editorial Review of Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics)
Metamorphoses--the best-known poem by one of the wittiest poets of classical antiquity--takes as its theme change and transformation, as illustrated by Greco-Roman myth and legend. Melville's new translation reproduces the grace and fluency of Ovid's style, and its modern idiom offers a fresh understanding of Ovid's unique and elusive vision of reality.
Customer Reviews of Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Classic
Review: I love this book! Originally a textbook for a Mythology class, I have kept it and read it multiple times. Very wonderful.
I especially love the story of Iphis.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Things change...
Review:
Maidens become trees. Young hunks turn into flowers. Men become women; women become invincible warriors. And every time you blink, another poor wretch becomes a bird or turns to stone. In Ovid's Metamorphosis, nothing stays the same for long. A rich compendium of Greco-Roman mythology and history all ingeniously linked together by the theme of transformation, the Metamorphosis is a surprisingly sophisticated, erotic, and gory classic of ancient literature.
Rapes, murders, wars, and all manner of perversion abound. Death is lingered over with almost forensic precision. The slaughter of arrogant Niobe's fourteen children, for example, is recounted in an exhaustive detail that would do any contemporary slasher flick justice, as one by one they're picked off in various grisly ways. This is classical gore--Ovid sounding like the Clive Barker of ancient Rome as in this excerpt from the massacre of the centaurs:
[Exadius] found a weapon, a stag's antlers
Hung on a pine tree...
And Gryneus' eyes were pierced by those twin prongs,
Eyeballs gouged out; one of them stuck to the horn,
The other rolled down his beard till a blood clot caught it.
This is the sort of wonderfully nauseating detail that is repeated countless times in a masterpiece that often reads like the National Enquirer. It's hard not to believe that Ovid, like Shakespeare, was aiming his work for the mass audience of his time, which just goes to show you that the product of one age's pop culture is another's venerated classic. One only has to read Ovid's over-the-top account of the love-sick Cyclops to realize that black comedy ala the B-movies of Herschel Gordon Lewis had already been mastered some two thousand years ago.
There are a bewildering proliferation of translations of Ovid's Metamorphosis to choose from. In selecting Humphries, I chose the text that struck me as the least encumbered by the translator's attempt to distinguish himself from his rivals. Many translators feel the pressing need to do something new, and to `recast' the Metamorphosis into what they consider a facsimile of contemporary poetry. The result is all-too-often a needless accretion of unnecessary words and poetic tropes that do nothing whatsoever to enhance the text, and much towards rendering it more difficult for novelty's sake alone, and to call attention to the translator--two things a translation should avoid at all costs.
Rolf Humphries renders the Metamorphosis into a clear, straightforward English verse whose easy-going casualness facilitates readability and comprehension, as well as reflecting the apparently colloquially style of Ovid's original. And Humphries accomplishes all this without sacrificing any of the poetry--his translation is often quite beautiful, not only in its clarity and apparent simplicity, but in its adept use of language that breathes life back into this ancient work. By stepping back and lending his breath to the ancient poet, Humphries allows Ovid himself to sing again.
One of the truly seminal works of world literature, not to mention an invaluable storehouse of myths and legends, Ovid's Metamorphosis is not only must reading for any lover of great literature, but also a heck of a lot of fun.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Myths in poetry
Review: This book by Ovid tells in verse the story of all the Greek myths. I used to read it to my son when he was younger, translating into Spanish because it is our first language, but he loved it so much that now that he is 18 he searched for it to purchase one for us and one to give as a present to a friend from school.
Ovid's theory is that everything metamorphoses or changes and he starts with the story of the creation and moves accordingly to the stories of the Titans, the Gods and the heroes. It is beautifully written, the images very rich and poetic. One of my favorite stories is of Echo and Narcissus. The English is antique, and since it is in verse, reading can be a little difficult, but if you go past this it is a book to cherish and remember.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: An Anthology of Greek Mythology, Clothed in Latin Dress
Review: Ovid was undoubtedly the most prolific Latin poet; his enormous corpus of poetry gives credence to that fact. Naso's works ranged from lusty love poetry and somber exile literature (all elegies) to the sweeping heroic epic, of which his immortal Metamorphosis is styled upon. The work itself is an anthology of traditional Greek mythology, clothed in Latin dress. Its aim seems to have been twofold: for one, to establish a historical link between the gods of old and the new Roman empire, and two, to popularize the myths of Greece for the Roman nobility and populus. And so, as the Metamorphosis contains many tales, and is in a sense many books within a book, it invites us to read it in small doses. Moreover, it hardly has the capacity to steal your imagination like Virgil's Aenied, but it does have the virtue of being poetic and encyclopedic, while at the same time being entertaining and didactic. A.D. Mellville's translation is suggested; his English is so smooth it is almost therapeutic.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: (Un) pleasant surprises and no happy endings.
Review: Publius Ovidius Naso was born in 43 B.C and died in 18 A.D.
He was banished for unknown reasons to Tomi, a barren place near the coast of the Black Sea. A few scholars believe that this was a literary hoax created by Ovid himself. It would enable him to write the 'Tristia' and 'Letters From The Black Sea'.
'Metamorphoses' is his main achievement. It contains 250 stories from the Greek Mythology and they all have in common that the principal character changes into another form. Most of the time they turn into an animal or a tree but also in a river, a constellation of stars, a rock or a flower and other pleasant surprises.
If you read this book you won't find many happy endings. The ancient Greeks didn't know the meaning of that expression.
It's not an easy read but if you persist it will be a rewarding literary experience.
Review Summary: Classic
Review: I love this book! Originally a textbook for a Mythology class, I have kept it and read it multiple times. Very wonderful.
I especially love the story of Iphis.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Things change...
Review:
Maidens become trees. Young hunks turn into flowers. Men become women; women become invincible warriors. And every time you blink, another poor wretch becomes a bird or turns to stone. In Ovid's Metamorphosis, nothing stays the same for long. A rich compendium of Greco-Roman mythology and history all ingeniously linked together by the theme of transformation, the Metamorphosis is a surprisingly sophisticated, erotic, and gory classic of ancient literature.
Rapes, murders, wars, and all manner of perversion abound. Death is lingered over with almost forensic precision. The slaughter of arrogant Niobe's fourteen children, for example, is recounted in an exhaustive detail that would do any contemporary slasher flick justice, as one by one they're picked off in various grisly ways. This is classical gore--Ovid sounding like the Clive Barker of ancient Rome as in this excerpt from the massacre of the centaurs:
[Exadius] found a weapon, a stag's antlers
Hung on a pine tree...
And Gryneus' eyes were pierced by those twin prongs,
Eyeballs gouged out; one of them stuck to the horn,
The other rolled down his beard till a blood clot caught it.
This is the sort of wonderfully nauseating detail that is repeated countless times in a masterpiece that often reads like the National Enquirer. It's hard not to believe that Ovid, like Shakespeare, was aiming his work for the mass audience of his time, which just goes to show you that the product of one age's pop culture is another's venerated classic. One only has to read Ovid's over-the-top account of the love-sick Cyclops to realize that black comedy ala the B-movies of Herschel Gordon Lewis had already been mastered some two thousand years ago.
There are a bewildering proliferation of translations of Ovid's Metamorphosis to choose from. In selecting Humphries, I chose the text that struck me as the least encumbered by the translator's attempt to distinguish himself from his rivals. Many translators feel the pressing need to do something new, and to `recast' the Metamorphosis into what they consider a facsimile of contemporary poetry. The result is all-too-often a needless accretion of unnecessary words and poetic tropes that do nothing whatsoever to enhance the text, and much towards rendering it more difficult for novelty's sake alone, and to call attention to the translator--two things a translation should avoid at all costs.
Rolf Humphries renders the Metamorphosis into a clear, straightforward English verse whose easy-going casualness facilitates readability and comprehension, as well as reflecting the apparently colloquially style of Ovid's original. And Humphries accomplishes all this without sacrificing any of the poetry--his translation is often quite beautiful, not only in its clarity and apparent simplicity, but in its adept use of language that breathes life back into this ancient work. By stepping back and lending his breath to the ancient poet, Humphries allows Ovid himself to sing again.
One of the truly seminal works of world literature, not to mention an invaluable storehouse of myths and legends, Ovid's Metamorphosis is not only must reading for any lover of great literature, but also a heck of a lot of fun.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Myths in poetry
Review: This book by Ovid tells in verse the story of all the Greek myths. I used to read it to my son when he was younger, translating into Spanish because it is our first language, but he loved it so much that now that he is 18 he searched for it to purchase one for us and one to give as a present to a friend from school.
Ovid's theory is that everything metamorphoses or changes and he starts with the story of the creation and moves accordingly to the stories of the Titans, the Gods and the heroes. It is beautifully written, the images very rich and poetic. One of my favorite stories is of Echo and Narcissus. The English is antique, and since it is in verse, reading can be a little difficult, but if you go past this it is a book to cherish and remember.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: An Anthology of Greek Mythology, Clothed in Latin Dress
Review: Ovid was undoubtedly the most prolific Latin poet; his enormous corpus of poetry gives credence to that fact. Naso's works ranged from lusty love poetry and somber exile literature (all elegies) to the sweeping heroic epic, of which his immortal Metamorphosis is styled upon. The work itself is an anthology of traditional Greek mythology, clothed in Latin dress. Its aim seems to have been twofold: for one, to establish a historical link between the gods of old and the new Roman empire, and two, to popularize the myths of Greece for the Roman nobility and populus. And so, as the Metamorphosis contains many tales, and is in a sense many books within a book, it invites us to read it in small doses. Moreover, it hardly has the capacity to steal your imagination like Virgil's Aenied, but it does have the virtue of being poetic and encyclopedic, while at the same time being entertaining and didactic. A.D. Mellville's translation is suggested; his English is so smooth it is almost therapeutic.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: (Un) pleasant surprises and no happy endings.
Review: Publius Ovidius Naso was born in 43 B.C and died in 18 A.D.
He was banished for unknown reasons to Tomi, a barren place near the coast of the Black Sea. A few scholars believe that this was a literary hoax created by Ovid himself. It would enable him to write the 'Tristia' and 'Letters From The Black Sea'.
'Metamorphoses' is his main achievement. It contains 250 stories from the Greek Mythology and they all have in common that the principal character changes into another form. Most of the time they turn into an animal or a tree but also in a river, a constellation of stars, a rock or a flower and other pleasant surprises.
If you read this book you won't find many happy endings. The ancient Greeks didn't know the meaning of that expression.
It's not an easy read but if you persist it will be a rewarding literary experience.