Ovid in the Middle Ages

This book explores the extraordinary influence of Ovid upon the culture - learned, literary, artistic and popular - of medieval Europe.

James G. Clark (Edited by), Frank T. Coulson (Edited by), Kathryn L. McKinley (Edited by)

9781107002050, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 July 2011

384 pages, 21 b/w illus.
23.5 x 16.1 x 2.3 cm, 0.73 kg

Ovid is perhaps the most important surviving Latin poet and his work has influenced writers throughout the world to the present day. This volume presents a groundbreaking series of essays on his reception across in the Middle Ages. The collection includes contributions from distinguished Ovidians as well as leading specialists in medieval Latin and vernacular literature, clerical and extra-clerical culture and medieval art, and addresses questions of manuscript and textual transmission, translation, adaptation and imitation. It also explores the intersecting cultural contexts of the schools (monastic and secular), courts and literate lay households. It elaborates the scale and scope of the enthusiasm for Ovid in medieval Europe, following readers of the canon from the Carolingian monasteries to the early schools of the Île de France and on into clerical and curial milieux in Italy, Spain, the British Isles and even the Byzantine Empire.

1. Introduction James G. Clark
2. Ovid's metempsychosis: the Greek East Elizabeth Fisher
3. Ovid's Metamorphoses in the school tradition of France, 1180–1400: texts, manuscript traditions, manuscript settings Frank T. Coulson
4. Recasting the Metamorphoses in fourteenth-century France: the challenges of the Ovide Moralisé Ana Pairet
5. Gender and desire in medieval French translations of Ovid's amatory works Marilynn Desmond
6. Ovid in medieval Italy Robert Black
7. Dante's Ovids Warren Ginsberg
8. Ovid from the pulpit Siegfried Wenzel
9. Ovid in the monasteries: the evidence from late medieval England James G. Clark
10. Gower and Chaucer: readings of Ovid in late medieval England Kathryn L. McKinley
11. Ovid in medieval Spain Vicente Cristóbal
12. A survey of imagery in medieval manuscripts of Ovid's Metamorphoses and related commentaries Carla Lord
13. Shades of Ovid: the pseudo-Ovidiana in the Middle Ages Ralph J. Hexter
Appendix: annotated list of selected Ovid manuscripts.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]