Ovid in the Vernacular: Translations of the Metamorphoses in the Middle Ages & Renaissance

In the Middle and Early Modern Ages, translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the vernacular played a pivotal role in its transmission to Europe's emerging cultures. These vernacular translations, along with the glosses, commentaries, and illustrations that frequently accompanied them, are the subject of this volume. Ovid in the Vernacular covers eight linguistic areas (English, Spanish, Catalan, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Greek) and offers new insights into how each of these appropriated and transformed the Latin poem through words and images. At the same time, it looks beyond national and linguistic borders, retracing the circulation of textual and non-textual elements of the vernacular Ovid across Europe, and connecting different literary traditions. This volume overcomes the perceived division between the Middle and Early Modern Ages as it charts both continuities and discontinuities between the two, addressing the influence of manuscript culture and print culture on the re-fashioning of Ovid. It thereby exposes the full range and power of the transformations to which Ovid's Metamorphoses lent itself, and how these allowed the work to become a constitutive part of the literary and artistic life of Western Europe.