Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Modern Europe (review)

Abstract

Alison Keith and Stephen Rupp, eds. Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Modern Europe. Publications of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Essays and Studies 13. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007. 350 pp. $37.00. As its title suggests, this collection of essays examines the influence of Ovid's Metamorphoses in pre-modern and early modern Europe. The fifteen essays gathered here are arranged in roughly chronological order, and while the majority of these essays concentrate on the influence of The Metamorphoses in literature, a few essays explore Ovid's influence in other realms such as art, alchemy, and demonology. More importantly, while these studies acknowledge the historical and/or social factors that shaped these evolving interpretations of Ovid, nearly all of the authors provide us with a close reading of The Metamorphoses in its original context. In fact, this sort of intertextuality is one of the collection's primary strengths, as it renders current Ovidian scholarship accessible to readers from a variety of fields without requiring them to stretch to the very limit of their interdisciplinary skills. In the introduction, Keith and Rupp trace the reception of Ovid's Metamorphoses from his contemporaries to Ausonious, carefully noting both admiration for and condemnation of this influential work. Here, the variety of criticism stemming from Ovid's contemporaries, who simultaneously criticized the poet's narcissistic self-indulgence in rhetorical witticism while reserving praise for his interwoven narratives and the sheer scope of the poet's mythical encyclopedia hint at some of the complexities that face the modern Ovidian scholar. Coulson's essay on the variety of medieval commentaries on Ovid in cathedral schools opens the section on medieval interpretations of Ovid and represents an important addition to the existing body of knowledge concerning the manuscript tradition. Subsequent chapters concentrate on the Christianization of Roman ethics and morality in the Ovide moralise (Desmond) and the notion of metamorphosis in the works of Christine de Pizan (Akbari, Zalamea). Akbari's essay on metaphor and allegory in the Mutacion de Fortune is particularly instructive because she demonstrates how the very notion of metamorphosis was framed by medieval commentaries on Ovid. To round out the section on pre-modern readings of Ovid, English literature is represented by Chaucer's rewriting of Ovidian myth (Fumo) and the relationship between poetry and political discourse in John Gower's Confessio amantis (McKinley). The transition to Renaissance literature and poetry is accomplished by two provocative essays on Ovidian influence on contemporary cultural constructs, specifically alchemy (Willard) and demonology (Fox). …