The metamorphosis of Ovid : from Chaucer to Ted Hughes

The Roman poet Ovid's best known poem, the 'Metamorphoses', is one of the cornerstones of Western culture and the principal source for all the most famous myths of Greece and Rome.

Not surprisingly, it has proved a continuing inspiration for poets, composers and painters alike.

This is an inclusive account of the 'Metamorphoses' on English literature over the course of six centuries, from Chaucer to Ted Hughes.

It is fitting that a work whose subject is transformation should have the capacity to metamorphose, to be appropriated by each new generation of writers, from medieval moralisers to twentieth-century postmodernists.

In every period writers have found their own Ovid and been drawn to a different aspect of his art: his playful questioning of literary authority, his preoccupation with the relationship between art and nature, his fascination with sexuality in all its manifestations, his verbal wit and, of course, the stories themselves. As well as offering reassessments of works whose debt to Ovid has long been recognised, such as 'The Tempest' and 'Paradise Lost', this book demonstrates that Ovidianism is an even more complex and pervasive phenomenon within English literature than has previously been recognised, and may be found in the most unexpected places.