England’s Ovid: The Font of Myths (I) (Pre-1800)

In this course we will read Ovid’s Latin compendium of mythical stories, the Metamorphoses, in the same version that Shakespeare and so many other English poets read: the 16th-century poetic translation by Arthur Golding, which Ezra Pound called “the most beautiful book in the English language.” We will discuss and critique the myths themselves (with an emphasis on oral storytelling) and occasionally explore how some of them reemerge in other English literature. In order to appreciate the particular qualities of Golding’s translation, we will read it alongside George Sandys’s elaborately engraved 1623 translation (a rare first edition of which is owned by Middlebury College), and compare both to one or two recent literal translations.