Oxford Readings in Ovid

No other ancient poet has had such a hold on the imagination of readers as Ovid. Through the centuries, artists, writers, and poets have found in his work inspiration for new creative endeavors. This anthology of twenty of the most influential papers published in the last thirty years represents the broad range of critical and scholarly approaches to Ovid's work. The entire range of his poetry, from the Amores to the Epistles from the Black Sea, is discussed by some of the leading scholars of Latin poetry, employing, critical methods ranging from philology to contemporary literary theory. In an introductory essay, Peter Knox surveys Ovidian scholarship over this period and locates the assembled papers within recent critical trends. Taken together, the articles in this collection offer the interested reader, whether experienced scholar or novice, an entree into the current critical discourse on Ovid, who is at once one of the most accessible authors of classical antiquity and one of the least understood.

Peter E. Knox is Professor of Classics, University of Colorado.