Shakespeare's Ovid: The Metamorphoses in the Plays and Poems

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A. B. Taylor
Cambridge University Press, Nov 30, 2000 - Literary Criticism - 219 pages
Ovid's great poem, Metamorphoses, was a source of life long fascination and inspiration for Shakespeare. He drew on its great myths throughout his career: in early works like Venus and Adonis and Titus Andronicus, works of the middle period like A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night, and late plays such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. This book provides a comprehensive examination of his use of Ovid's poem with contributions from international scholars. It begins by examining the use of Ovid's myth in early Elizabethan literature, a use dramatically changed by Marlowe and Shakespeare himself. It then offers detailed readings of Shakespeare's use of Ovid in a wide range of plays and poems, placing emphasis on several important but often underestimated features. The book also provides a survey of twentieth-century criticism and methodology in the field.

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Contents

the metamorphoses of Ovid
15
Ovid renascent in Venus and Adonis and Hero
31
Ovid rape
49
Venus and Adonis and Ovidian indecorous wit
81
Ovid Petrarch and Shakespeares Sonnets
96
Pyramus and Thisbe in Shakespeare and Ovid
113
reading Hamlet in
126
Ovid Golding and the rough magic of The Tempest
150
a critical
181
List of works cited
195
Index
216
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About the author (2000)

Dr A. B. Taylor, formerly Dean of Humanities at the Swansea Institute, has published widely on Shakespeare and the Elizabethans in leading journals. Now a full-time writer, his other works include poetry, short stories and radio plays.