Ovid in the Middle Ages

Ovid is perhaps the most important surviving Latin poet and his work has influenced writers throughout the world to the present day. This volume presents a groundbreaking series of essays on his reception across in the Middle Ages. The collection includes contributions from distinguished Ovidians as well as leading specialists in medieval Latin and vernacular literature, clerical and extra-clerical culture and medieval art, and addresses questions of manuscript and textual transmission, translation, adaptation and imitation. It also explores the intersecting cultural contexts of the schools (monastic and secular), courts and literate lay households. It elaborates the scale and scope of the enthusiasm for Ovid in medieval Europe, following readers of the canon from the Carolingian monasteries to the early schools of the Île de France and on into clerical and curial milieux in Italy, Spain, the British Isles and even the Byzantine Empire.

1. Introduction James G. Clark; 2. Ovid's metempsychosis: the Greek East Elizabeth Fisher; 3. Ovid's Metamorphoses in the school tradition of France, 1180–1400: texts, manuscript traditions, manuscript settings Frank T. Coulson; 4. Recasting the Metamorphoses in fourteenth-century France: the challenges of the Ovide Moralisé Ana Pairet; 5. Gender and desire in medieval French translations of Ovid's amatory works Marilynn Desmond; 6. Ovid in medieval Italy Robert Black; 7. Dante's Ovids Warren Ginsberg; 8. Ovid from the pulpit Siegfried Wenzel; 9. Ovid in the monasteries: the evidence from late medieval England James G. Clark; 10. Gower and Chaucer: readings of Ovid in late medieval England Kathryn L. McKinley; 11. Ovid in medieval Spain Vicente Cristóbal; 12. A survey of imagery in medieval manuscripts of Ovid's Metamorphoses and related commentaries Carla Lord; 13. Shades of Ovid: the pseudo-Ovidiana in the Middle Ages Ralph J. Hexter; Appendix: annotated list of selected Ovid manuscripts.

James G. Clark is Reader in History at the University of Bristol. He has published widely on the learned culture of later medieval England. His publications include A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans: Thomas Walsingham and his Circle, c.1350–c.1440 (2004). His research on the reception of the classics has been supported by fellowships from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Frank T. Coulson is a Professor in the Department of Greek and Latin at the Ohio State University where he serves as Director of Palaeography in the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies. He has published extensively on the medieval and Renaissance manuscript tradition of Ovid. His books include The Vulgate Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses: The Creation Myth and the Story of Orpheus (1991) and (with Bruno Roy) Incipitarium Ovidianum: A Finding Guide for Texts in Latin Related to the Medieval School Tradition on Ovid (2000).
Kathryn McKinley is Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has published several studies on Ovid in medieval England (both in manuscript contexts and vernacular poetry). Her book, Reading the Ovidian Heroine: Metamorphoses Commentaries 1100–1618 (2001) is the first extended study of clerical readings of gender in medieval and early modern commentaries on Ovid. She is currently at work on a book-length study of Chaucer's House of Fame.