Avid for Ovid: transmogrified by the classics. (Ted Hughes' translation of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses')

Economist (US), The, May, 1997

Hughes' translation of 24 passages of Ovid's 'Metamophoses' is the first translation of Ovid since that completed by John Dryden 300 years ago. Hughes seeks to provide a translation that is not literal, but conveys the author's 'sense.'

THE last poet laureate to translate Ovid was John Dryden. Nearly 300 years later, the current holder of that title, Ted Hughes, has memorably translated two dozen passages from the Latin poet's "Metamorphoses", a work that retells virtually every Greek myth in which somebody turns into something-a bull, a tree, a star.

Publius Ovidius Naso was the youngest poet of Latin literature's golden age, and the most read, most taught and most admired during the medieval and early modern periods. There are 77 copies of works by Ovid...

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