Brown uses the following eleven chapters to develop a narrative of Ovidianism while she simultaneously furthers our understanding of the Metamorphoses, the world of which “has its own peculiar atmosphere. Brown reminds us that “its permeation into so much of English literature has in turn shaped each generation’s response to Ovid and lent still more resonance to his voice … Ovid’s immortality is bound up in his capacity for endless change, continual reappropriation” (p. However, this elementary statement is soon revealed to be exponentially more complex as one considers the countless ways in which Ovid serves his readers and his imitators. She succeeds in doing this and, in the process, offers an approachable guide, with many examples, to anyone hoping to distill and identify Ovidian style.īrown writes twelve chapters in all, with the first explaining Ovidianism, stated simply as “a set of characteristics identifiable in Ovid, in particular the Ovid of the Metamorphoses” (p. The challenge for Brown is to find a threefold alignment among Ovid’s work itself, the imitations and manipulations of Ovid in a literature that spans nearly a millennium, and English Ovidian scholarship that has, in the last hundred years, defined Ovidianism with increasing undulations of literary critical magic. She also incorporates previous treatments of Ovid’s influence as found in Leonard Barkan and Charles Martindale. Included too are the principal works of Ovidian scholarship, from Frederick Ahl and Stephen Hinds to Brooks Otis and L.P. A quick scan of the bibliography reveals a profound knowledge of the canonical works of the English literature, including those of Shakespeare, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Blake. Sarah Annes Brown treats this idea with a wide account of Ovidianism in English literature. Whether one is struck by the truth in the adage that everything remains the same, or whether one is ready to defend Ovid’s works from such reductivism, one thought is perhaps common to all: that Ovid’s works are alive and well even into our present time. This passing reference to Ovid stirs many responses. Looking at him with sparkling and half-shut eyes, Alice responds, “Didn’t he write about adultery?” The man responds affirmatively and the seductive dance continues. The aristocrat asks the inebriated Alice if she has ever read Ovid. In Stanley Kubrick’s final film “Eyes Wide Shut,” 1 Alice, the wife of a young socialite doctor, attends a ball and finds herself dancing in the arms of a dashing count.

Ted hughes ovid