A Companion to Ovid

This Companion is a fitting tribute to one of the most admired and influential poets of classical antiquity. More than 30 new essays from an international cast of noted literary specialists reflect the most recent developments in Ovidian scholarship. Written in an accessible and lively style, the essays represent a wide range of critical methodologies and approaches to Ovid’s world and literary oeuvre. These essays tackle such basic issues as backgrounds and contexts, genre and style, ancient and modern reception, while also offering provocative new interpretations of the poet′s major works, from the Amores and Ars amatoria to the Metamorphoses and beyond. Brimming with fresh and innovative scholarly insights, A Companion to Ovid is a comprehensive overview of a poet whose ever–increasing literary stature and popularity are now made accessible to a new generation of readers.

List of Figures viii Notes on Contributors ix Preface xiv List of Abbreviations xv Chronological Table xvii Part I Contexts 1 1. A Poet’s Life 3 Peter E. Knox 2. Poetry in Augustan Rome 8 Mario Citroni 3. Rhetoric and Ovid’s Poetry 26 Elaine Fantham 4. Ovid and Religion 45 Julia Dyson Hejduk Part II Texts 59 5. The Amores: Ovid Making Love 61 Joan Booth 6. The Heroides: Female Elegy? 78 Laurel Fulkerson 7. The Ars Amatoria 90 Roy K. Gibson 8. Remedia Amoris 104 Barbara Weiden Boyd 9. Fasti: The Poet, The Prince, and the Plebs 120 Geraldine Herbert–Brown 10. The Metamorphoses: A Poet’s Poem 140 E. J. Kenney 11. The Metamorphoses: Politics and Narrative 154 Gareth D. Williams 12. Tristia 170 Jo–Marie Claassen 13. Ibis 184 Martin Helzle 14. Epistulae ex Ponto 194 Luigi Galasso 15. Lost and Spurious Works 207 Peter E. Knox Part III Intertexts 217 16. Ovid and Hellenistic Poetry 219 Jane L. Lightfoot 17. Ovid and Callimachus: Rewriting the Master 236 Benjamin Acosta–Hughes 18. Ovid’s Catullus and the Neoteric Moment in Roman Poetry 252 David Wray 19. Propertius and Ovid 265 S. J. Heyworth 20. Tibullus and Ovid 279 Robert Maltby 21. Ovid’s Reception of Virgil 294 Richard F. Thomas Part IV Critical and Scholarly Approaches 309 22. Editing Ovid: Immortal Works and Material Texts 311 Mark Possanza 23. Commenting on Ovid 327 Peter E. Knox 24. Ovidian Intertextuality 341 Sergio Casali 25. Sexuality and Gender 355 Alison Keith 26. Ovid’s Generic Transformations 370 Joseph Farrell 27. Theorizing Ovid 381 Efrossini Spentzou Part V Literary Receptions 395 28. Ovidian Strategies in Early Imperial Literature 397 Charles McNelis 29. The Medieval Ovid 411 John M. Fyler 30. Ovid in Renaissance English Literature 423 Heather James 31. Ovid and Shakespeare 442 Gordon Braden 32. Ovid in the Twentieth Century 455 Theodore Ziolkowski 33. Translating Ovid 469 Christopher Martin Bibliography 485 Index 516

Peter E. Knox is Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado. His publications include Ovid′s Metamorphoses and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry (1986) and Ovid, Heroides: Select Epistles (1995), as well as many articles on a wide range of topics in Greek and Roman literature.

“The result is something quite extraordinary, a coherent and engaging treatment of the full corpus of Ovid’s writing in just under 130 pages . . . V. has produced an eminently readable, highly engaging introduction to Ovid, one that speaks to exactly the audience she had envisaged, in a voice both accessible and smart.”  ( The Classical Review , 1 October 2012) “Aimed at the general reading public and at newcomers to Ovid, her book is also a delight for experienced Ovidian scholars, providing an engaging, attractive, and thoughtful overview of the poet and his works that shows why his oeuvre remains intellectually valuable as well as an enjoyable read. Fluent and accessible, the volume covers a great deal of ground with lightness of foot. Volk takes a thematic approach that cuts across individual works in productive ways, but the simple titles of the chapters – ‘Work’, ‘Life’, ‘Elegy’, ‘Myth’, ‘Art’, ‘Women’, ‘Rome’, ‘Reception’ – do not adequately convey a sense of the treasures that lie within their pages.”  ( Greece & Rome , 1 October 2012)