Metamorphic readings : transformation, language, and gender in the interpretation of Ovid's metamorphoses / Daniel Möller, Mats Malm, Alison Sharrock.

"Ovid's remarkable and endlessly fascinating Metamorphoses is one of the best known and most popular works of classical literature, and perhaps the most influential of all on later European literature and culture. Loved for its vast repository of mythic material as well as its sophisticated manipulation of story-telling, the poem can be appreciated on many different levels and by audiences of very different backgrounds and educational experiences, whether it is for the tale of Pyramus and This be or the endless but endlessly fascinating debate over the generic status of this epic which breaks all the rules and yet somehow must be included in any canon of Roman epics. The key to metamorphosis can be said to be not just transformation but also transgression, an especially significant issue in today's culture and society. The actuality of Ovid's Metamorphoses thus is remarkably strong, and that shows in the new scholarly approaches to the work. This anthology presents a number of recent developments, which, while representing different kinds of approach, explore the effects of transformation and transgression of borders in new ways. The main three aspects are transformations into the Metamorphoses (from what did the mythic narratives evolve), transformations in the Metamorphoses ¬(what new understandings of the dynamic of metamorphosis can be achieved), and how were the Metamorphoses transformed in later times, acquiring new meanings. So, transformation is explored as a form of transgression of states, or even the transcendence of mythic narrative"--