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Translating Ovid's Metamorphoses in Tudor Balladry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2019

Lindsay Ann Reid
Lindsay Ann Reid*
Affiliation:
National University of Ireland, Galway
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Abstract

This article provides the first sustained overview and analysis of the reception of Ovid's “Metamorphoses” in sixteenth-century English ballad culture. It highlights a significant tradition of translating materials from this ancient Roman source into the stuff of vernacular song—a phenomenon that can be traced back as far as 1552. Positing that popular music must have played a crucial role in shaping Tudor ideas about the “Metamorphoses,” this study draws attention to the textual, visual, aural, and kinetic dimensions of the Ovidiana that was regularly read, seen, heard, sung, and even danced to by early modern consumers of mythological ballads.

Type
Articles
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , Summer 2019 , pp. 537 - 581
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2019 

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Footnotes

A preliminary version of this study was presented at the “Ovid across Europe” conference organized by Marta Balzi and Gemma Pellissa Prades at the University of Bristol in 2017. I am grateful to Renaissance Quarterly’s anonymous readers for their valuable commentary. English translations of Ovid's Latin throughout this essay are drawn from the Loeb editions.

References

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