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Booke of Ovyde Named Methamorphose
The first English translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses was the work of William Caxton, not just England's first printer but also a successful merchant, diplomat, and one of the most prolific translators of the fifteenth century. Extremely popular in the late Middle Ages, the stories in the Metamorphoses featured in works by Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate.
Caxton's translation, which survives only in a single manuscript now in Magdalene College, Cambridge, was made not from the original Latin but from a prose version of the French Ovide moralis, a chivalric adaptation which includes allegorical and historical interpretations of the fables as well as additional classical tales. In the fifteenth century, Burgundian chivalric taste influenced the proliferation of the prose romance, and this genre was, in turn, sought as the height of English literary fashion. The Booke of Ovyde is thus a perfect example of how Caxton both reflected and influenced literary tastes of his day.
This critical edition, the first of the entire work, seeks to encourage the study of Caxton's Ovyde, both as an example of the late-medieval mise en prose and as a significant part of Caxton's considerable oeuvre. It also serves as an entry point into the complex textual tradition of medieval Ovidian commentaries.
Caxton's translation, which survives only in a single manuscript now in Magdalene College, Cambridge, was made not from the original Latin but from a prose version of the French Ovide moralis, a chivalric adaptation which includes allegorical and historical interpretations of the fables as well as additional classical tales. In the fifteenth century, Burgundian chivalric taste influenced the proliferation of the prose romance, and this genre was, in turn, sought as the height of English literary fashion. The Booke of Ovyde is thus a perfect example of how Caxton both reflected and influenced literary tastes of his day.
This critical edition, the first of the entire work, seeks to encourage the study of Caxton's Ovyde, both as an example of the late-medieval mise en prose and as a significant part of Caxton's considerable oeuvre. It also serves as an entry point into the complex textual tradition of medieval Ovidian commentaries.
About the author
Richard J. Moll is Associate Professor of English at Western University in London, Ontario. The author of "Before Malory: Reading Arthur in Later Medieval England" (2003) and numerous journal articles, his research and publications focus on late medieval English literature and the ways in which canonical narratives were adapted, translated and transformed during the Middle Ages.