OVID S METAMORPHOSES AND THEIR LITERAR

Ovid’s Metamorphoses have enchanted, and sometimes troubled, readers since they first appeared in the year 8 CE.    This course is designed first, to read, closely, the Metamorphoses in its entirety.  We will look at Hellenistic sources – Hesiod’s Theogony, Boios’s Orthinogonia, as well as the Heteroioumena by Alexander of Colophon.   We will also investigate moments in their complex literary afterlife: in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in Shakespeare’s Tempest, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as Boccaccio and Dante.  Finally we will look at some translations of the Metamorphoses, by Caxton and Gower, Dryden and Pope, as well as contemporary translations.