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 the process of the transmission of this poem to the emerging European cultures. These vernacular translations, together with the glosses, commentaries, and illustrations that frequently accompanied them, are the object of study of this collective volume. Ovid in the Vernacular covers eight linguistic areas (English, Spanish, Catalan, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Greek) and offers new insights about the way in which each of these emerging vernacular cultures appropriated and transformed this Latin poem through words and images. At the same time, this book looks beyond national and linguistic borders and retraces the circulation of textual and non-textual elements of the vernacular Ovid across Europe, connecting different literary traditions. This volume overcomes the perceived division between Middle and Early Modern Ages, and charts continuities and discontinuities between these two historical periods, addressing the influence of manuscript culture and print culture on the re-fashioning of Ovid. The scope of this publication is to bear witness to the transformative ability of Ovid's Metamorphoses and unveil how the transformations to which this poem lent itself allowed this work to become a constitutive part of the literary and artistic life of Western Europe. Gemma Pellissa Prades is a postdoctoral researcher in the Departament de Filologia Catalana i Lingüística General at the Universitat de Barcelona. Marta Balzi has recently completed her PhD at the University of Bristol.