Metamorphoses

Charles Martin was born in New York City in 1942. He earned a Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. The recipient of numerous awards, Martin has received the Bess Hokin Prize, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. Three of his poetry collections—Steal the Bacon (1987), What the Darkness Proposes (1996), and Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems (2002)—have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses won the 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. Charles Martin was born in New York City in 1942. He earned a Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. The recipient of numerous awards, Martin has received the Bess Hokin Prize, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. Three of his poetry collections—Steal the Bacon (1987), What the Darkness Proposes (1996), and Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems (2002)—have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses won the 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsA Note on This TranslationA Brief Life of OvidThe Text of Metamorphoses1. Book I: The Shaping of Changes2. Book II: Of Mortal Children and Immortal Lusts3. Book III: The Wrath of Juno4. Book IV: Spinning Yarns and Weaving Tales5. Book V: Contests of Arms and Song6. Book VI: Of Praise and Punishment7. Book VII: Of the Ties That Bind8. Book VIII: Impious Acts and Exemplary Lives9. Book IX: Desire, Deceit, and Difficult Deliveries10. Book X: The Songs of Orpheus11. Book XI: Rome Begins at Troy12. Book XII: Around and About the Iliad13. Book XIII: Spoils of War and Pangs of Love14. Book XIV: Around and About with Aeneas15. Book XV: Prophetic Acts and Visionary Dreams Contexts1. Bernard Knox : Ovid in His Time and Ours2. Seneca the Elder : Two Anecdotes of Ovid INFLUENCES, ANXIOUS AND BENIGN1. Hesiod : From Works and Days2. Lucretius : From De rerum natura3. Callimachus : Hymn VI: To Demeter4. Virgil : From the Aeneid5. Charles Martin : Ovid's Metamorphoses and Pantomime Dancing Criticism1. J. W. Mackail : [A Work of Such Wide Importance]2. Diane Middlebrook : A Roman in His Prime3. Italo Calvino : Ovid and Universal Contiguity4. Norman O. Brown : Daphne, or Metamorphosis Persons, Places, and Personifications in the MetamorphosesSelected Bibliography