Shakespeare and Ovid / Edition 1

by Jonathan Bate

Overview

Written by a leading Shakespeare scholar, this book is the first comprehensive account of the relationship between Shakespeare and his favorite poet, Ovid. Bate examines the full range of Shakespeare's works, identifying Ovid's presence not only in the narrative poems and pastoral comedies, but also in the Sonnets and mature tragedies. Demonstrating how profoundly creative Ovid's influence was, especially in his representations of myth, metamorphosis, and sexuality, this original and elegantly written study reveals Shakespeare as an extraordinarily sophisticated reader of Ovidian myth and as a metamorphic artist as fluid and nimble as his classical original.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198183242
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/01/1994
Series:	Clarendon Paperbacks
Pages:	310
Sales rank:	638,286
Product dimensions:	8.52(w) x 5.52(h) x 0.77(d)
Lexile:	1390L (what's this?)

About the Author

University of Liverpool

Table of Contents

	List of Abbreviations	xiv
	A Note on References	xv
1.	Shakespeare and the Renaissance Ovid	1
2.	Sexual Poetry	48
3.	The Art of Precedent	83
4.	Comedy and Metamorphosis	118
5.	Tragedy and Metamorphosis	171
6.	From Myth to Drama	215
	Bibliography	271
	Index	285

Editorial Reviews

"Jonathan Bate, with the wind blowing briskly against him, is willing to write of Shakespeare and Ovid, separated as they are by centuries of historical turbulence....Bate's choice of Ovid as affording a means of returning to the idea of literature as transcending history seems to me both correct and very cunning....[A] marvellous book....Bate is, again and again, brilliant."—London Review of books

"Well written and accessible, the book not only enhances one's understanding of Shakespeare, but may lead students to an interest in Ovid....Highly recommended."—Choice

"Impressive in [its] scope and scholarship....Genuinely illuminating....Jonathan Bate has written the first comprehensive account of Shakespeare's relationship with the poet who influenced him the most deeply, Ovid....a fine example of scholarship put at the service of Shakespeare."—The Sunday Telegraph

"There is much to admire and to be grateful for in Shakespeare and Ovid. It is quite simply the best study of the topic that has yet appeared."—Shakespeare Quarterly

From the Publisher