A Companion to Ovid

This is the second of Companions (the first was Skinner's Catullus) devoted to high-profile authors on the classics list.

The list will be limited to major figures such as Homer, Virgil, Horace, Sophocles Evidence for the contemporary surge of interest in Ovid's poetry is abundant: new books of criticism and new translations of his works proliferate on publishers' lists and bibliographies swell with articles of interpretation.

The explosion of scholarly and critical activity in Ovidian studies over the last three decades reflects only one aspect of his continuing popularity.

Ovid has always been favored by readers, who continue to devour his works, both in Latin and in very large numbers in translation.

The success of Mary Zimmerman's Broadway production of Metamorphoses and Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid are only two recent manifestations of the reception of Ovid in our art and literature. In antiquity Ovid's works were not read in the schools; that is certainly not the case now, when the Metamorphoses is standard fare not only in the traditional classical curriculum, but in the now ubiquitous large lecture courses in translation and Ovid is a curricular option for Advanced Placement students in secondary school.