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Metamorphoses (Paperback)
Ovid; Translated by A.D. Melville; Edited by E. J. Kenney
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R294
R244
Discovery Miles 2 440
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The theme of the Metamorphoses is change and transformation, as
illustrated in Graeco-Roman myth and legend. On this ostensibly
unifying thread Ovid strings together a vast and kaleidoscopic
sequence of brilliant narratives, in which the often paradoxical
and always arbitrary fates of his human and divine characters
reflect the never-ending flux and reflux of the universe itself.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has
made available the widest range of literature from around the
globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to
scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of
other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading
authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date
bibliographies for further study, and much more.
The third book of Lucretius' great poem on the workings of the
universe is devoted entirely to expounding the implications of
Epicurus' dictum that death does not matter, 'is nothing to us'.
The soul is not immortal: it no more exists after the dissolution
of the body than it had done before its birth. Only if this fact is
accepted can men rid themselves of irrational fears and achieve the
state of ataraxia, freedom from mental disturbance, on which the
Epicurean definition of pleasure was based. To present this case
Lucretius deploys the full range of poetic and rhetorical
registers, soberly prohibitive, artfully decorative or passionately
emotive as best suits his argument, reinforcing it with vivid and
compelling imagery. This new edition has been completely revised,
with a considerably enlarged Commentary and a new supplementary
introduction taking account of the great amount of new scholarship
of the last forty years.
The third book of Lucretius' great poem on the workings of the
universe is devoted entirely to expounding the implications of
Epicurus' dictum that death does not matter, 'is nothing to us'.
The soul is not immortal: it no more exists after the dissolution
of the body than it had done before its birth. Only if this fact is
accepted can men rid themselves of irrational fears and achieve the
state of ataraxia, freedom from mental disturbance, on which the
Epicurean definition of pleasure was based. To present this case
Lucretius deploys the full range of poetic and rhetorical
registers, soberly prohibitive, artfully decorative or passionately
emotive as best suits his argument, reinforcing it with vivid and
compelling imagery. This new edition has been completely revised,
with a considerably enlarged Commentary and a new supplementary
introduction taking account of the great amount of new scholarship
of the last forty years.
This is Ovid's wittily imagined version of the letters exchanged by
three famous pairs of lovers. Heroides XVI-XXI constitute an
artfully constructed triptych: Hero and Leander's tragedy of high
romance and fleeting happiness framed by two ironic comedies, that
of Paris and Helen distinctly black, that of Acontius and Cydippe
ending the book on a note of tantalising ambiguity. This is the
first edition of these poems with commentary in any language since
1898. It provides a substantially improved text, together with all
the guidance needed by students for the understanding of Ovid's
Latin and the appreciation of his poetic art. The Introduction
offers the first adequate discussion ever published of the poet's
treatment of his literary sources and models, and deals succinctly
but decisively with the question of authorship.
In AD 8 Ovid's brilliant career was abruptly blasted when the
Emperor Augustus banished him, for reasons never satisfactorily
explained, to Tomis (Constanta) on the Black Sea. The five books of
Tristia (Sorrows) express his reaction to this savage and, as he
clearly regarded it, unjust sentence. Their title belies them.
Though their ostensible theme is the misery and loneliness of
exile, their real message, if they are read with the care they
deserve, is one of affirmation. Both directly and, as befitted the
Roman Callimachus, allusively, Ovid repeatedly asserts, often with
a wit and irony that borders on defiance, his conviction of the
injustice of his sentence and of the pre-eminence of the eternal
values of poetry over the ephemeral dictates of an earthly power.
These elegies are throughout informed by Ovid's awareness of a
continuing pride in his poetic identity and mission. In technical
skill and inventiveness, they rank with the Art of Love or the
Fasti. This is poetry as accomplished as anything he had written in
happier days and demands no less critical respect. For this new
translation of Ovid's poems, all of which are in elegiacs, Alan
Melville has used the same system of rhyming stanzas that he
evolved so successfully for Ovid's Love Poems. Here again he has
reproduced the virtuosity, elegance, and wit of the original, and
presents a collection of poems in which the reader will find
continual interest and pleasure.
In the two centuries covered by this volume, from about AD 250 to
450, the Roman Empire suffered a period of chaos followed by
drastic administrative and military reorganization. Simultaneously
Christianity emerged as a new religious force, to be first
recognized by Constantine and then eventually to become the
official religion of the Roman state. The old pagan culture
continued to provide the basis for education and the staple
literary diet of the leisured classes; but it now had perforce to
coexist and indeed to compete with a new, specifically
Christian-oriented literature. These and associated developments
are reflected in the Latin books of the period. Of the traditional
forms and genres, some atrophied, some were transformed and
invigorated; and yet others, such as autobiography in something
like the modern sense, emerged in response to the pressures of the
times. Professor Browning's masterly and comprehensive survey is
mostly concerned with pagan literature, but takes into account
Christian texts written in classical forms and directed at
classically educated readers. The volume ends with a chapter on
Apuleius by Professor Walsh, followed by a brief Epilogue from the
same hand, sketching the part played by classical studies in the
formation of the Latin literature of the Middle Ages.
'Perfection is finality; finality is death'. The poets and prose
writers of the first and early second centuries AD were not
deterred by the towering stature of their Augustan predecessors
from attempting new and often brilliant variations on the now
traditional themes and genres. The so-called 'Silver' Age of Latin
literature has tended to be characterized in terms of dismissive or
question- begging stereotypes - 'decadent', 'rhetorical',
'baroque', 'mannerist' - as a substitute for close critical
argument. From the sympathetic but searching appraisals in this
volume the best writers of the age - Lucan, Seneca, Statius,
Juvenal, Tacitus - emerge as men having something important to say
and not merely technicians preoccupied with the most extravagant or
paradoxical way of saying it. Complementary to these central
figures as giving the age its special character and atmosphere are
the minor poets, the satirists, the scholars and rhetoricians, the
lesser historians, epistolographers and technical writers, whose
varied activity provides the background to the main developments.
The whole offers a detailed portrait of the literary interests of
an age that was of necessity becoming increasingly more conscious
of the past and of the problems of coping with its cultural
heritage.
The sixty years between 43 BC, when Cicero was assassinated, and AD
17, when Ovid died in exile and disgrace, saw an unexampled
explosion of literary creativity in Rome. Fresh ground was broken
in almost every existing genre, and a new kind of specifically
Roman poetry, the personal love-elegy, was born, flourished, and
succumbed to its own success. Latin literature now became, in the
familiar modern sense of the word, classical: a balanced fusion of
what was best and most stimulating in earlier Greek and Roman
writing, charged with new and original life by the individual
genius of, most particularly, Virgil, Horace and Ovid. Augustan
literature, conventionally viewed as the expression in writing of
the age itself - political and social stability reflected in
artistic equilibrium - turns out on a close and critical reading to
have been subject to the same stresses and strains as the society
in and for which it was produced. In appraising the monumental
literary achievements of the age the underlying tensions and
contradictions are not ignored. The critical discussions in this
volume do full justice to the complexity and subtlety of the
literature itself.
This volume covers a relatively short span of time, rather less than the first three-quarters of the first century BC; but it was an age of profoundly important developments, with enduring consequences for the subsequent history of Latin literature. Original and innovative in widely differing ways as was the work of Lucretius, Sallust and Caesar in particular, the scene is dominated, historically, by two figures: Cicero and Catullus. Cicero was a politician and a man of affairs as well as a man of latters, whose vast literary output reflects a range of intellectual interests unparalleled among surviving Roman writers; creator of a prose style the Quintilian regarded as synonymous with eloquence itself; and better known to us, from his letters, as a human being, than any other figure from classical antiquity. Catullus was a poet, single-mindedly devoted to fostering the tradition of learned Alexandrian poetry at Rome; the author of one slender volume of verse that has attracted more critical attention in proportion to its size than any other ancient poetry-book; and the lover of Lesbia. In these chapters it is shown how these, and other, Roman writers of genius continued the process of transforming their traditional Greek models into new and vigorous Latin forms, with lasting effects for oratory, historiography, and the higher genres of poetry.
A collaborative critical history of Latin literature from its beginnings until the breakup of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. The paperback edition has been divided into five chronological volumes. Each includes the relevant sections of the appendix of authors and works, metrical appendix and its own bibliography and index.
This is a thoroughly revised new edition of the standard text of these poems, reflecting the progress of Ovidian scholarship during the last thirty years and the further thoughts of the editor. Presentation has been improved, with students particularly in mind, to make the book more accessible and `reader-friendly'.
The story of Cupid and Psyche is part of The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses, a Latin novel by Apuleius (second century A.D.). It is both a charming fairytale and an allegory of the search of the Soul for happiness and fulfillment. This edition, the first with a full commentary in English to appear for eighty years, comprises a Latin text with facing translation, making the edition more accessible to students of comparative literature. An introduction and a commentary provide help with interpretation and up-to-date guidance to scholarship in the field.
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