Metamorphoses (hardcover)

A bold, transformative new translation of Ovid’s classic

Ovid’s epic poem has, with its timeless stories, inspired and influenced generations of writers and artists, from Shakespeare and Chaucer to Picasso and Ted Hughes. The events it describes – the flight of Icarus, the music of Orpheus, Perseus’ rescue of Andromeda, the fall of Troy – speak toward the essence of human experience: of power, of fate and, most fundamentally, of transformation.

Stephanie McCarter’s new rendering, the first female translation in over sixty years, places its emphasis on the sexual violence at the heart of the poem – nearly fifty of the epic’s tales involve the rape or attempted rape of women. While past translations have often obscured or mitigated this fact, expressing Ovid’s language in consensual terms, McCarter considers it explicitly, and so offers a powerful new exploration of this essential work.