Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics): Amazon.ca: Ovid A. D. Melville E. J. Kenney: Books

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17 Reviews

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4.4 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating tales of murder, mayhem and wrathful gods, Dec 29 2003

By

richard lionhearted (Philly,PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Metamorphoses of Ovid (Paperback)

I really don't know about how faithful this was to the original, because I don't speak Latin. I read this book solely because I like mythology.

This book is very good reading with tales of murders, rapes, betrayals, honour, battles, incest and you name it! If it was made into a movie it probably would be NC-17!

I must warn you that the author has a habit of referring to gods and goddesses by multiple names. For example one god will be referred to by his name, son of x, grandson of y,etc. There are also tons of characters that are introduced.

It might help if you take some notes while reading this book, but it is well worth the read if you like mythology.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Seeing the Metamorphoses, Mar 25 2002

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Wendy Thomas "Wendy" (Iowa, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

This translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by A.D. Melville has some good points as well as some bad points. The stories are well told. They are put into English that is easy to understand; yet Melville maintains much of the original prose. The biggest downfall would be the arrangement of the stories is slightly random and hard to follow when one attempts to read straight through the work. However, each story in itself is well written and portrays the idea of its appropriate myth. The notes at the back of the text help the reader to understand ideas that might not be obvious to a reader in this 20th century, where many of us have little background in mythology. There is also a glossary that the reader may use to find specific stories about certain characters. In my mythology class, I found this method especially useful in projects in which require finding many stories about a certain god, for instance. Perhaps the most important aspect of Ovid's renditions of the myths is that they contain many details about surroundings or the visual contexts of the myths, which help a reader to relate more easily. This may not be found in other texts dealing with the same myths. Many texts focus more on the story itself and the events occurring. If one is a visual learner, perhaps this book would be most helpful in understanding and interpreting many of the important myths. All in all, this is a pretty good book, yet there may be one that better serves to tie the myths together in an easy to follow way.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Readable, yes, but for the wrong reasons, Jan 26 2002

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B. C. Giles (Gainesville, Fl USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Metamorphoses of Ovid (Paperback)

As the translator (Mary M. Innes) herself will tell you in the introduction, many of the standard conventions of Latin poetry have been stripped out of this prose translation. While this certainly makes the stories more readable, it also removes everything which makes this work "Ovidian." If you're reading the book simply for its description of classical mythology, you probably won't mind. Anyone attempting to get a handle on Ovid himself should look elsewhere (I personally recommend the Mandelbaum translation, but as with all translated literature, nothing is quite perfect. Learning some latin wouldn't hurt you anyway, now would it? :-) ).

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect hassle-free reading
There is a review on the back cover of the book, from British Book News. It says " a book every literate person ought to own", I couldn't agree more. Read more

Published on May 5 2002 by J. L..

3.0 out of 5 stars The Translation Makes the Difference
If I got one thing from reading this book, was that for the first time ever I realised how much difference a translation makes. Read more

Published on Aug 1 2001 by C. Sellers