This study investigates the reception of Ovid's heroines in Metamorphoses commentaries written between 1100 and 1618. The Ovidian heroine offers a telling window onto medieval and early modern clerical constructions of gender and selfhood. In the context of classical representations of the feminine, the book examines Ovid's engagement of the heroine to explore problems of intentionality. The second part of the study presents commentaries by such clerics as William of Orleans, the "Vulgate" commentator, Thomas Walsingham, and Raphael Regius, illustrating the reception of the Ovidian...

Ovid is perhaps the most important surviving Latin poet and his work has influenced writers throughout the world. This volume presents a groundbreaking series of essays on his reception across 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),...

This book explores the extraordinary influence of Ovid upon the culture - learned, literary, artistic and popular - of medieval Europe.