Ovid

Ovid ( Publius Ovidius Naso) (43 bc–ad 18), Roman writer of love elegies (Amores), who then experimented with the imaginary letter (Heroides), mock didactic verse (Ars Amatoria), ‘collective’ narrative relating disconnected stories inside a large historical (Metamorphoses) or chronological (Fasti) frame, and finally with elegies of nostalgic complaint (Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto). Ovid continued in favour with writers and public so long as Rome was pagan, but the Christian Church disapproved of his immorality. Interest revived with the 11th cent. and during the Renaissance Ovid enjoyed great favour. Chaucer and Gower both borrowed his stories. But the late 16th and early 17th cents were England's Ovidian Age when Lodge, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, G. Chapman, Drayton, T. Heywood, were all indebted to him directly or through A. Golding's translation of the Metamorphoses (1565–7). By the middle of the 17th cent. his popularity was in decline, although echoes of his lines can be found in Milton. With the growth of Puritan seriousness, the mixture of wit and sensuality that Ovid offered no longer had an immediate appeal. Themes from the Metamorphoses were handled by W. King (‘Orpheus and Eurydice’, 1704), Swift (Baucis and Philemon), Prior (‘Daphne and Apollo’, 1740), Shelley (Arethusa, 1820), Morris (‘Pygmalion’ in The Earthly Paradise, 1868–70), Swinburne (Atalanta in Calydon, 1865), and Shaw (Pygmalion, 1916), but they stray very far from their originals. Ted Hughes produced some free verse translations in Tales from Ovid (1997).