Metamorphoses Essays

Charles Tomlinson declares that this book, emerging from the practice, the art and magic of translation, concerns itself with 'the way certain fables of metamorphosis have captured the poetic imagination and how translation - literary metamorphosis - extends this process'. Metamorphoses demonstrates, with a wealth of examples and close readings, how poetry itself is a form of metamorphosis. Raw materials are transformed and realised through literary expression and technique; a translation both transforms the original work and creates new possibilities in the literature into which it moves. Tomlinson develops these themes through readings of Ovid, Horace and Martial in English poetry, and the significance of translation and metamorphosis in Shelley, Dryden, Eliot and Pound.