Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds (Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 18)

Frankel, Hermann

ISBN 10: 0520330919 / ISBN 13: 9780520330917

Published by University of California Press, Berkley - Los Angeles, 2021

About this Item

2021. viii, 282pp. The book is in excellent condition with no inscriptions, and all contents are tight and clean. "This is a short book on a large and complex, yet well-defined, subject. Dealing as it does with a single writer, it is meant to be a comprehensive, fairly balanced volume. Thus, I have chosen to sin on the side of omission rather than on that of profusion, and have offered only part of the material I believe to have at hand to support my somewhat heterodox position. At the same time, I hope that the work is soundly based, and I have striven to be correct in what I say or imply. But I know there are errors, for I have caught some myself, and I shall be grateful for any corrections and criticisms, in print or otherwise. Brevity seemed essential, but still no poet can be properly appreciated unless he is given a direct, unhurried hearing. Hence, significant passages from Ovid's works have been treated in some detail, especially in the beginning; and throughout the book, much of what I wanted to bring out has been said, not in my own words, but by selective quotation and paraphrase. The numerous bits of translation are intended to render the bare meaning of Ovid's lines, with no attempt to reproduce his art. Even so, I must ask the reader's indulgence for them." (From the author's Preface.).

Seller Inventory # ClassOvid021

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds (Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 18)
• Publisher: University of California Press, Berkley - Los Angeles
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520330919
• ISBN 13: 9780520330917
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: Reprint
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Ancient History/Classical

About this title

Synopsis

Ovid: A Poet Between Two Worlds is Hermann Fränkel’s masterful reappraisal of Rome’s most mercurial poet, presented as part of the Sather Classical Lectures. Long dismissed as a frivolous craftsman, Ovid here emerges as a writer whose artistry and contradictions mark the twilight of antiquity and the dawn of a new cultural world. Moving through the Amores, Heroides, Metamorphoses, and the exile poems, Fränkel demonstrates how Ovid combined rhetorical brilliance with startling innovations—probing identity, love, myth, and history in ways that resonate beyond the confines of Augustan Rome. By attending both to close readings and broader literary traditions, this book restores Ovid’s poetry to its full complexity, balancing entertainment with depth, charm with insight.

Fränkel situates Ovid’s career “between two worlds”—the last convulsions of the Roman Republic and the formative stirrings of a Christian sensibility. His analysis highlights the poet’s distinctive treatment of myth as a mirror of human experience, his frank explorations of erotic and emotional life, and his persistent negotiation between art and reality. Written with a clarity that invites students of literature and seasoned classicists alike, Ovid: A Poet Between Two Worlds not only rescues Ovid from centuries of critical complacency but also illuminates the enduring fascination of a poet whose playful verse concealed, and revealed, profound cultural transformations.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1945.