On Ovid's Metamorphoses

by Gareth Williams

Overview

Ovid’s Metamorphoses has entranced audiences for two thousand years, from Rome under Augustus to humanities classrooms today. Borrowing liberally from Greek and Roman mythology, the poem tells hundreds of stories that share one essential theme: each tale depicts a transformation from one physical form into another.

Drawing on many years of teaching the Metamorphoses, Gareth Williams offers a brisk and lively reading of the poem that emphasizes why it speaks in compelling ways to a twenty-first-century audience. He shows how the Metamorphoses is not just a colorful collection of stories about change but an exploration of change itself. Ovid challenges us to recognize flux as fundamental to human experience: circumstances shift, fortunes ebb and flow, and our very identities ceaselessly evolve across from one life stage to another.

Capturing the energy and excitement that Ovid’s poem generates among readers, Williams also sheds new light on its modern provocations. His fresh interpretations of the Metamorphoses reveal its power to enrich and inform our daily existence amid the uncertainties of life today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231200714
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	01/03/2023
Series:	Core Knowledge
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gareth Williams is Anthon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature at Columbia University. He has published extensively on Ovid, Roman philosophy, and classical reception.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1. Diversity, Idiosyncrasy, and Self-Discovery in the Metamorphoses
2.The Liabilities of Language: Change and Instability in Ovid’s World of Words
3. The Path of Deviance: Sexual Morality and the Incestuous Urge in the Metamorphoses
4. Rough Justice: Victimization, Revenge, and Divine Punishment in the Metamorphoses
Epilogue
Further Reading
Index

Editorial Reviews

10/31/2022

Ovid’s magnum opus becomes newly relevant for the 21st-century reader in this accessible reconsideration from Williams (Banished Voices: Readings in Ovid’s Exile Poetry), a literature professor at Columbia. While readers ought to “tread carefully” because the tale is “rooted in a culture that’s so distant from our own,” Williams writes that Ovid’s “interest in self-realization at the individual level strikes a timely chord.” In the first chapter, he suggests the epic is a “remarkably flexible, liberating, open-minded” text that bucks conformity and embraces “quirky” personalities, while a section on Ovid’s use of language and his interest in separating fact from fiction shows how Metamorphoses can be applied in “a world in which fake news appears so prevalent.” Elsewhere, Williams covers the poem’s depiction of sexual morality (a “form of inner struggle” that relates to how today “young lives are encouraged to express an authentic, core self” in the face of “social expectation and accepted norms”), and closes with a consideration of the graphic sexual violence and trauma portrayed by Ovid. Smart close readings abound, and Williams’s punchy analyses make the book fun to read, though they never obscure his mastery of the subject. Literature students should give this a look. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

This is a wonderful book. It offers an introduction to Ovid's Metamorphoses and the life of the poet, guiding the reader through some of the epic’s most memorable moments. The primary pleasure of the book is to read about a great poem through the words of a sensitive and experienced teacher, who wears his erudition very lightly. The writing frequently sparkles, with contemporary allusions and wicked puns throughout.

James Uden

The book is full of lively and provocative readings of Ovid’s greatest work, careening through its changing tales and tales about change to portray a work which, having endured throughout the two millennia since its composition, find a deep resonance even in—or especially in—the 2020s.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

The perfect sidekick to accompany readers on their journey through Ovid’s epic—whether approaching the Metamorphoses for the very first time or revisiting this ever-changing kaleidoscope of a poem.

Genevieve Liveley

A delightful volume....highly recommended.

Choice

Lucid, insightful, and lively, this book offers compelling new interpretations of Ovid that speak to current issues such as fake news, deceptive speech, sexual violence, gender inequity, and strategies of resistance within an autocracy. These are serious themes, but Williams adopts some of Ovid’s own wit and psychological nuance, providing an accessible and intellectually exciting approach to the Metamorphoses.

Carole E. Newlands