Thursday, July 10, 2008

Ovidian Marginalia

I’ve never read the Metamorphoses. At the past two Woolf conferences, I’ve heard really good papers tracing allusions to Ovid in Woolf. I need to find allusions for my edition of Mrs. Dalloway. Thus, I brought my old, used edition of Ovid up here with me to start thinking about possible connections. I open it up to find, in an unknown hand, the following: “20 B.C. / Roman / had some distance / patriarchal/ less awesome.” Lovely. What can it mean? Ovid is “less awesome” than…

2 comments:

Kerry said...

I love you blog. Look forward to much further reading. Thanks for the inspiration.

Emily said...

Nothing. Ovid is less awesome than nothing.

The Metamorphoses is a wonderful book and the first time I read it I couldn't put it down. I'd recommend Charles Martin's translation, by the way. It has more flow than many of the other more recent translations.

I'd never picked up on any Ovidian allusions in Woolf, though. I'm going to have to go hunting for them now. Thanks for the tip, and have fun with Ovid!