When does imitation of an author morph into masquerade? Although the Roman writer Ovid died in the first century CE, many new Latin poems were ascribed to him from the sixth until the fifteenth century. Like the Appendix Vergiliana, these verses reflect different understandings of an admired Classical poet and expand his legacy throughout the Middle Ages.
The works of the medieval Ovid mirror the dazzling variety of their original. The Appendix Ovidiana includes narrative poetry that recounts the adventures of both real and imaginary creatures, erotic poetry that wrestles with powerful desires and sexual violence, and religious poetry that-despite the historical Ovid's paganism-envisions the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ.
This is the first comprehensive collection and English translation of these pseudonymous medieval Latin poems.
Ralph Hexter is Distinguished Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis. Laura Pfuntner is a Lecturer in Ancient History at Queen's University Belfast. Justin Haynes is a postdoctoral scholar in Classics at the University of California, Davis.
Title: Appendix Ovidiana: Latin Poems Ascribed to Ovid in the Middle Ages (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library)
Author: Ralph Hexter
ISBN: 9780674238381
Binding:
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication Date: 2020-05-29
Number of Pages: 544
Weight: 3.1976 kg
In this excellent and well-crafted volume, Hexter, Pfuntner, and Haynes have performed a great service for all scholars interested in the later tradition of Ovid...This volume marks an important addition to the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. It makes accessible for the first time Latin poems circulating under Ovid's name from antiquity to the late Middle Ages. It should be on every medievalist's bookshelf. -- Frank Coulson * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
This volume is a welcome addition to the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library...The editors have crafted a very helpful introduction that contextualizes each of the poems and explains how medieval scribes related them to Ovid...Scholars of medieval Latin poetry will appreciate this collection of poems attributed to Ovid, which brings together in one place many otherwise obscure pieces of late antique and medieval Latin verse that share an association with the famed Roman poet. -- Scott G. Bruce * Mediaevistik *