One of the most influential works in Western culture, the "Metamorphoses" has inspired such authors as Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare. Numerous episodes from the poem have been depicted in acclaimed works of sculpture, painting, and music. Although interest in Ovid faded after the Renaissance, there was a resurgence of attention to his work towards the end of the 20th century. Today the "Metamorphoses" continues to inspire and be retold through various media. Numerous English translations of the work have been made, the first by William Caxton in 1480.
Introduction
Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses | Introduction
It is the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. It chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework It is about the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework A young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor.
how old was william shakespeare when he wrote hamlet
user
Between 1589 and 1613 at the age of 49.
assistant
who is he?
user
He was an English playwright, poet, and actor.
assistant
name a few of his poems?
user
"Venus and Adonis", "The Rape of Lucrece", "Metamorphoses", "A Lover's Complaint".
assistant
what is the third poem about?
user
In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece". He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In "Venus and Adonis", an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in "The Rape of Lucrece", the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin. Influenced by Ovid's "Metamorphoses", the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, "A Lover's Complaint", in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the "Sonnets" in 1609.
William Shakespeare | Poems
(Directions 27-52): In the third stage the poet lists four possibilities:
... but the clouds ... | Stage 3
The music of the first metamorphosis echoes the "free-spirited" character of its titular figure: it is unmeasured and includes frequent pauses. This contrasts with the second metamorphosis, a quick and rhythmic representation of the chariot ride of Phaeton, marked "vivace ritmico". The third is slower and is marked "piangendo", or "crying". The four-part fourth metamorphosis reflects the atmosphere of a drunken feast or festival. The fifth, marked "lento piacevole", is meant to convey the act of staring at a reflection in a pool. The work concludes with a "pleasant and meandering" representation of beauty and flow.
Six Metamorphoses after Ovid | Music
The rest of the poem describes the narrator's evening with the third girl, how they ate dinner and how they went to bed together. The poem ends, of course, immediately before the consummatory act. "Did it turn out well?" the poet asks, "Love knows all."
De tribus puellis | Introduction
On hearing this the king asks the poet who his father is. Upon discovering the identity of the poets father the king tells the poet 'his seed has degenerated in you'. The third poet who appears before the king has a noble mother but a lesser father and is not of great abilities. When the king hears this poet he again asks who the father is. The poet is ashamed to mention his father and so speaks to the king of his uncle who possesses great skill and wit. Upon observing this the king roars with laughter. When he is asked why he begins to tell a story.
Disciplina Clericalis | The Three Poets
Edwards's two known poems concern characters who all feature in Ovid's poem Metamorphoses. Cephalus and Procris are a romantic couple. Narcissus famously fell in love with his own reflection. Edwards's poems were published as a single volume in 1595; "Cephalus and Procris" is in couplet form, "Narcissus" in a seven-line stanza. In the first poem Edwards appears to be imitating Marlowe, and in the latter Shakespeare. The author concluded each work with a long postscript; in "Narcissus" this includes, using aliases, references to other poets including: Amintas (Thomas Watson); Collyn (Edmund Spenser); Leander (Christopher Marlowe); Rosamond (Samuel Daniel) and Adon (Shakespeare).
Thomas Edwards (poet) | "Cephalus and Procris" and "Narcissus"
In Italy, the poem was an influence on Giovanni Boccaccio (the story of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in his poem "L'Amorosa Fiammetta") and Dante.
Metamorphoses | Influence
The third sonnet in "Fidessa", beginning ‘Venus and yong Adonis sitting by her,’ was reproduced in 1599 in "The Passionate Pilgrime".
Bartholomew Griffin | Works
The third book, which contains 290 verses, is by a much inferior hand. The writer calls himself Lygdamus and the love that he sings of Neaera. He has little poetical power, and his style is meagre and "jejune". He has a good many reminiscences and imitations of Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, and they are not always happy. It is unknown when his poems were added to the genuine poems of Tibullus.
Tibullus | Third book of poetry
Ceres appeals to Cupid to release her nymphs; Cupid agrees, if Ceres will pardon Erisichthon. (The faithful love of Protea for Petulius has earned her Cupid's protection.) The nymphs are restored to their original forms once they agree to accept the three humans as husbands; the quadruple wedding is held at the house of Erisichthon.
Love's Metamorphosis | Synopsis
The second poem is in 21 iambic trimeters. Priapus addresses a passer-by, describes how he protects and nourishes the farm through the seasons, and demands respect, as his wooden phallus can double as a club. The third poem is composed of 21 lines in Priapean metre (– x – u u – u – | – x – u u – x). In it, the Priapus statue addresses a group of boys who want to rob the farm. He describes his protection of the farm and the worship the owners give it. He ends by telling the boys to rob a neighbor's farm whose Priapus is careless.
Appendix Vergiliana | "Priapea" ("Priapus Poems")
In the second part of the poem, there is a sudden transition into imagery that involves graves, marble vaults and worms. The narrator's use of such metaphors to depict a realistic and harsh death that awaits the lovers seems to be a way of shocking the lady into submission. As well, critics note the sense of urgency of the narrator in the poem's third section, especially the alarming comparison of the lovers to "amorous birds of prey".
To His Coy Mistress | Critical reception and themes
The first book describes the formation of the world, the ages of man, the flood, the story of Daphne's rape by Apollo and Io's by Jupiter. The second book opens with Phaethon and continues describing the love of Jupiter with Callisto and Europa. The third book focuses on the mythology of Thebes with the stories of Cadmus, Actaeon, and Pentheus. The fourth book focuses on three pairs of lovers: Pyramus and Thisbe, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, and Perseus and Andromeda. The fifth book focuses on the song of the Muses, which describes the rape of Proserpina. The sixth book is a collection of stories about the rivalry between gods and mortals, beginning with Arachne and ending with Philomela.
Ovid | "Metamorphoses" ("Transformations")
The third stanza describes how those who survived the war live now with shell shock, in that scenes from the battlefield insert themselves into everyday life; sunlight is a "blood-smear" on a window, then night falls "blood-black" - they cannot escape the sight of blood. The macabre tone of the poem is added to by the image of hallucinations of "set-smiling corpses", describing the "hilarious, hideous" faces of the patients as they remember. Typically for Owen, he concludes with blame; it was "us who smote them", and "dealt them war and madness"; this echoes the ending of Owen's most famous poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est".
Mental Cases | Short Analysis
While Sappho does not describe the myth of Adonis, later sources flesh out the details. According to the retelling of the story found in the poem "Metamorphoses" by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 AD), Adonis was the son of Myrrha, who was cursed by Aphrodite with insatiable lust for her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus, Aphrodite found the baby, and took him to the underworld to be fostered by Persephone. She returned for him once he was grown and discovered him to be strikingly handsome. Persephone wanted to keep Adonis; Zeus settled the dispute by decreeing that Adonis would spend one third of the year with Aphrodite, one third with Persephone, and one third with whomever he chose.
Adonis | Ovid's "Metamorphoses"
The rest of the poem is essentially a defense of Pound, who, like Capaneus, was fighting against the unsurmountable flood of philistinism. In the third stanza, Pound is said to have listened to the song of Homer's Syrens (quoted in Greek: "Ἴδμεν γάρ τοι πάνθ', ὅσ 'ένι Τροίη" - "We know all the things that belong to Troy"), to have confronted dangers and ignored the warnings of the prudent. This has led inevitably to his being dismissed as an outsider and forgotten by the literary establishment, "in the 31st year of his life", i.e. circa 1916, when Pound published "Lustra".
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley | A brief analysis
The second poem is separated into numbered sections. Sullivan uses this poem to reference films, pop culture, and technology. Sullivan describes the same woman moving to California. From San Francisco to the British town of Rye, she discovers an environment marked by repetition. The people around her have a specific routine that they stick by. Sullivan theorizes the impossibility of originality: There is saying something the same thing in a different form, There is saying something new in the same form, There is saying the same thing again in the same form There is not much saying something new in a new form
Three Poems | "Repeat Until Time: The Heraclitus Poem"
Metamorphoses is a themed work of poetry composed by Ovid. Metamorphoses may also refer to:
Metamorphoses (disambiguation) | Introduction
The third poem is a "maldit-comiat" in which Guillem renounces his lover, who is, of course, an ugly liar. Guillem's "maldits" influenced the "maldits" of Jordi de Sant Jordi.
Guillem de Masdovelles | Love life: "maldits" and "comiat"
The thirteenth book discusses the contest over Achilles' arms, and Polyphemus. The fourteenth moves to Italy, describing the journey of Aeneas, Pomona and Vertumnus, and Romulus. The final book opens with a philosophical lecture by Pythagoras and the deification of Caesar. The end of the poem praises Augustus and expresses Ovid's belief that his poem has earned him immortality. In analyzing the "Metamorphoses", scholars have focused on Ovid's organization of his vast body of material. The ways that stories are linked by geography, themes, or contrasts creates interesting effects and constantly forces the reader to evaluate the connections. Ovid also varies his tone and material from different literary genres; G.
Ovid | "Metamorphoses" ("Transformations")
The third book is dedicated to Pollius Felix of 2.2. Statius stresses the confidence he now has in his "Silvae" and Pollius' help in their composition. The poems deal with consolation, description, and end with an exhortation to Statius' wife to move with him to Naples. 3.1 "Hercules Surrentinus Polli Felicis" ("The Hercules of Pollius Felix at Surrentum") This long poem describes a shrine constructed by Pollius for Hercules. The poet describes a picnic he attended with Pollius and the downpour that forced them to shelter in a dilapidated shrine to Hercules. Hercules appears to Pollius and commissions him to build him a temple which is dutifully planned and built.
Silvae | Book 3
For most of its plot, the poem is heavily indebted to Book 4 of the Metamorphoses of the Roman author Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D.18). However, Metham not only substitutes the names of Ovid's lovers (Pyramus and Thisbe), but Christianizes the entire story by adding a somewhat surprising salvific ending. For its style, language, and role of the narrator, Metham depends heavily on the fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer, especially his poem Troilus and Criseyde.
Amoryus and Cleopes | Literary relations
1), and William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire (No. 3). A commendatory poem by Philip Kynder appeared with the work. Sampson's efforts to attract the patronage of the Cavendishes continued. An unprinted poem by him, inscribed to Margaret Cavendish, Marchioness of Newcastle, is entitled "Love's Metamorphosis, or Apollo and Daphne"; it is in some 180 six-line stanzas, and is extant in Harleian MS. 6947 (No. 41, ff. 318–336). The first line runs "Scarce had Aurora showne her crimson face". Another of Sampson's poems, entitled "Cicero's Loyal Epistle according to Hannibal Caro", was dedicated to Lucy Hastings, wife of Ferdinando, Lord Hastings.
William Sampson (playwright) | Verse
This form was also used by Edmund Spenser and Thomas Lodge. The poem consists of 199 stanzas or 1,194 lines.
Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem) | Introduction
The argument continues more or less evenly, though Flora is given somewhat more lines to boast about clerics. For the third part, covering stanzas forty four to fifty nine, the women travel to the court of Cupid to seek his opinion on the matter. Much of the material discusses the richness of the women's clothing and mounts. Finally, in the fourth part, covering stanzas sixty through seventy nine, the women arrive at Cupid's court. However, Cupid does not render a verdict himself and leaves the matter to his court. Their decision is that clerics are the superior lovers and the poem ends with a moral warning women against trusting their honour to a knight.
Phyllis and Flora | Synopsis
The "Catalepton" is a collection of fifteen or sixteen poems in various meters. The first elegiac poem is addressed to Tucca and describes the poet's separation from his lover. The second makes fun of a fellow writer for his obsession with Attic dialect. The third elegiac piece is a description of a successful eastern general who fell from power. Poem 4 in elegiacs is on the poet's friendship and admiration for Octavius Musa. Poem 5 describes a poet's giving up of rhetorical study to learn philosophy with Siro. The elegiac sixth poem criticizes Noctuinus and his father-in-law for some scandal with a girl.
Appendix Vergiliana | "Catalepton" ("Trifles")
The Metamorphoses (: "Books of Transformations") is an 8 AD Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his "magnum opus". Comprising 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths, the poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Although meeting the criteria for an epic, the poem defies simple genre classification by its use of varying themes and tones. Ovid took inspiration from the genre of metamorphosis poetry, and some of the "Metamorphoses" derives from earlier treatment of the same myths; however, he diverged significantly from all of his models.
Metamorphoses | Introduction
The third song, "When That Head Splits", was inspired by the Salvador Dalí poem and painting "Metamorphosis of Narcissus" and the story of Narcissus saying that he was an exceptionally proud man, in that he disdained those who loved him. Nemesis saw this and attracted Narcissus to a pool where he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with it. Unable to embrace the watery image, he pined away, and the gods immortalized him as a Narcissus. The title of the song is a direct line from the poem, they wanted to use words from the poem to put in the song but, due to legal issues, they decided against it.
Wash the Sins Not Only the Face | Lyrics and themes
The Tale of Orpheus and Erudices his Quene is a poem by the Scottish northern renaissance poet Robert Henryson that adapts and develops the Greek myth which most famously appears in two classic Latin texts, the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid and the "Georgics" of Virgil.
The Tale of Orpheus and Erudices his Quene | Introduction
Shakespeare's early erotic poem "Venus and Adonis" expands on the myth in Book X of the "Metamorphoses". In "Titus Andronicus", the story of Lavinia's rape is drawn from Tereus' rape of Philomela, and the text of the "Metamorphoses" is used within the play to enable Titus to interpret his daughter's story. Most of Prospero's renunciative speech in Act V of "The Tempest" is taken word-for-word from a speech by Medea in Book VII of the "Metamorphoses". Among other English writers for whom the "Metamorphoses" was an inspiration are John Milton—who made use of it in "Paradise Lost", considered his "magnum opus", and evidently knew it well—and Edmund Spenser.
Metamorphoses | Influence
A conspicuous lack of punctuation contributes to the poem's tonal ambiguity. While the second stanza begins with a conjunction, implying a connection to the first stanza, the third stanza is separated from the first two by the capitalized "Forgive". In a 1950 interview, John W. Gerber asked the poet what it is that makes "This Is Just to Say" a poem; Williams replied, "In the first place, it's metrically absolutely regular... So, dogmatically speaking, it has to be a poem because it goes that way, don't you see!" Critic Marjorie Perloff writes, "on the page, the three little quatrains look alike; they have roughly the same physical shape.
This Is Just to Say | Analysis
The story of Midas (Book XI 174–193) is referred to and appears—though much altered—in The Wife of Bath's Tale. The story of Ceyx and Alcyone (from Book IX) is adapted by Chaucer in his poem "The Book of the Duchess", written to commemorate the death of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster and wife of John of Gaunt. The "Metamorphoses" was also a considerable influence on William Shakespeare. His "Romeo and Juliet" is influenced by the story of Pyramus and Thisbe ("Metamorphoses" Book IV); and, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", a band of amateur actors performs a play about Pyramus and Thisbe.
Metamorphoses | Influence
The full appearance of the "Metamorphoses" in English translation (sections had appeared in the works of Chaucer and Gower) coincides with the beginning of printing, and traces a path through the history of publishing. William Caxton produced the first translation of the text on 22 April 1480; set in prose, it is a literal rendering of a French translation known as the "Ovide Moralisé". In 1567, Arthur Golding published a translation of the poem that would become highly influential, the version read by Shakespeare and Spenser. It was written in rhyming couplets of iambic heptameter. The next significant translation was by George Sandys, produced from 1621–6, which set the poem in heroic couplets, a metre that would subsequently become dominant in vernacular English epic and in English translations.
Metamorphoses | In English translation
Venus has a vision, and warns him that if he does so, he will be killed by a boar. She then flings herself on him, tackling him to the ground. He prises himself loose, and lectures her on the topic of lust versus love. He then leaves; she cries.
Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem) | Synopsis
Venus and Adonis is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare published in 1593. It is probably Shakespeare's first publication. The poem tells the story of Venus, the goddess of Love; of her unrequited love; and of her attempted seduction of Adonis, an extremely handsome young man, who would rather go hunting. The poem is pastoral, and at times erotic, comic, and tragic. It contains discourses on the nature of love, and observations of nature. It is written in stanzas of six lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ABABCC; although this verse form was known before Shakespeare's use, it is now commonly known as the "Venus and Adonis" stanza, after this poem.
Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem) | Introduction
The poet's dialect is "central–southern Italian". Each strophe is composed of monorhyming "ottonari" and a concluding monorhymed couplet or tercet of "endecasillabi", though there are metrical and linguistic irregularities. The poet is indebted to an unnamed Latin source, "scriptura", possibly the Bible. It has been speculated, based on internal references to "fegura" (figure, allegory, picture, drawing), that the poem may have been performed by a "giullare" with visual aids. The opening stanza introduces the contrast between this life and the afterlife. The poet goes on to sermonise on the attraction of this life in the third stanza. In the fourth the allegory is introduced between the "mosse d'Oriente" ("good sir from the Orient") and he "d'Occidente".
Ritmo cassinese | Introduction
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter and rhymes in couplets. The first verse paragraph ("Had we...") is ten couplets long, the second ("But...") six, and the third ("Now therefore...") seven. The logical form of the poem runs: if... but... therefore...
To His Coy Mistress | Structure
Poem 13 is in iambics and attacks a certain Lucienus or Luccius for his love affairs and seedy living. Poem 13a is an elegiac epitaph on an unknown scholar. Poem 14 is an elegiac prayer to Venus to help him complete the "Aeneid" and a promise to pay his vows to her. The final poem is an elegiac epigram for Virgil's tomb signed by Varius. Scholarly support for a Virgilian authorship of the Catalepton remains significant.
Appendix Vergiliana | "Catalepton" ("Trifles")
Philip Martin describes the third quatrain as a "tone of self-love, as the poet sees it in the youth" and it is "not praise alone, nor blame alone; not one and then the other; but both at once".
Sonnet 1 | Quatrain 3
It appears as if the third canto shows—in comparison with the previous cantos—a turning-point. Whereas Shelley had accepted death and changes in life in the first and second canto, he now turns to "wistful reminiscence [, recalls] an alternative possibility of transcendence". From line 26 to line 36 he gives an image of nature. But if we look closer at line 36, we realise that the sentence is not what it appears to be at first sight, because it obviously means, so sweet that one feels faint in describing them. This shows that the idyllic picture is not what it seems to be and that the harmony will certainly soon be destroyed.
Ode to the West Wind | Third Canto
Amoryus and Cleopes is a poem written in 1449 by John Metham; it was an early English adaptation of the Pyramus and Thisbe narrative from Book 4 of Ovid‘s Metamorphoses.
Amoryus and Cleopes | Introduction
The scazon poems are arranged two in the 3rd group, two in the 4th, and two in the 5th. The last ten poems consist of a coda of 4 poems in elegiac couplets, 3 in hendecasyllables, 2 in scazons, and 1 poem in elegiac couplets. Kloss argues that if the poems were a miscellaneous anthology, they would presumably have contained poems in other metres too, such as the iambic (84 and 87), aeolic (85, 89) or hexameter (95) metres used in the "extra" poems in Smithers and Burton's edition. Further, in the second dedicatory poem, the poet announces that he has written (not collected together) the poems: "Playfully, without taking too much trouble, I have written these poems, which as you can witness, Priapus, are more suitable for a garden than for a book of poems":
Priapeia | Authorship
The poem is written from a third-person omniscient perspective in rhyming iambic tetrameter, with turns of phrase satirising Homerian epic.
Carmen Possum | Poem structure
Christ III is an anonymous Old English religious poem which forms the last part of "Christ", a poetic triad found at the beginning of the Exeter Book. "Christ III" is found on fols. 20b–32a and constitutes lines 867–1664 of "Christ" in Krapp and Dobbie's edition. The poem is concerned with the Second Coming of Christ ("parousia") and the Last Judgment.
Christ III | Introduction
However, the poem "handles the themes and employs the tone of virtually every species of literature", ranging from epic and elegy to tragedy and pastoral. Commenting on the genre debate, G. Karl Galinsky has opined that "... it would be misguided to pin the label of any genre on the "Metamorphoses"." The "Metamorphoses" is comprehensive in its chronology, recounting the creation of the world to the death of Julius Caesar, which had occurred only a year before Ovid's birth; it has been compared to works of universal history, which became important in the 1st century BC. In spite of its apparently unbroken chronology, scholar Brooks Otis has identified four divisions in the narrative:
Metamorphoses | Contents
The poem features images typical of the Petrarchan sonnet, yet they are more than the "threadbare Petrarchan conventionalities". In critic Clay Hunt's view, the entire poem gives "a new twist to one of the most worn conventions of Elizabethan love poetry" by expanding "the lover–saint conceit to full and precise definition", a comparison that is "seriously meant". In the third stanza, the speaker likens himself and his lover to candles, an eagle and dove, a phoenix, saints, and the dead. A reference to the Renaissance idea in which the eagle flies in the sky above the earth while the dove transcends the skies to reach heaven.
The Canonization | Imagery
Book 3 consists of 30 poems. III.1, "Odi profanum vulgus et arceo..." – On Happiness – Philosophy is a mystery which the uninitiated crowd cannot understand. The worthlessness of riches and rank. The praise of contentment. Care cannot be banished by change of scene.
Odes (Horace) | Book 3
Anthony Hecht's third book of poetry is titled "Millions of Strange Shadows" in reference to the second line.
Sonnet 53 | Cultural references
The poem repeats many of the images of the first section, but with some changes of word-order. The golden hair of Margarete is now counterpointed with "your ashen hair Shulamith", and "he" now grabs his gun, and is described as blue-eyed, while issuing his orders.
Todesfuge | Second section (lines 10–19)
Fourth, poetry is about something very new. A footnote by Lewis agrees. Fifth, poetry is about something very old, such as the experience of rebirth.
The Personal Heresy | Chapter Six
In spite of the "Metamorphoses" enduring popularity from its first publication (around the time of Ovid's exile in 8 AD) no manuscript survives from antiquity. From the 9th and 10th centuries there are only fragments of the poem; it is only from the 11th century onwards that manuscripts, of varying value, have been passed down. Influential in the course of the poem's manuscript tradition is the 17th-century Dutch scholar Nikolaes Heinsius. During the years 1640–52, Heinsius collated more than a hundred manuscripts and was informed of many others through correspondence. But the poem's immense popularity in antiquity and the Middle Ages belies the struggle for survival it faced in late antiquity.
Metamorphoses | Manuscript tradition
Industry, commerce, agriculture, manufacture and trade are the gods directing the conflict, but the conflict is glorious and the gods worthy of worship. There seems to be no use looking for irony here."
Poetical Sketches | "King Edward the Third"
"The Last Ride Together (From Her Point of View)" parodies Robert Browning's "Last Ride Together"; Lord Byron is parodied in "A Grievance"; and William Wordsworth in "A Sonnet": Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep: And, Wordsworth, both are thine.
James Kenneth Stephen | Poetry
The triptych form is further explored and experimented in the poet's third collection, "Therapy with Antigone and the Trilogy Verses", encompassing a third of the collection.
G. F. Zaimis | Triptych
Renata and Arthur surpass the problems and traumas of the past together and proceed to take it all as a blessing and a gift, because in the end if none of the bad things in the past didn't happen then Renata and Arthur would never had met and fell in love.
Seus Olhos | Third phase
Other writers examine the poem's worth in the corpus of Sappho's poetry, as well as its links with Greek epic, particularly the homecoming stories of the "Odyssey". Various reconstructions of the missing opening stanzas have been offered.
Brothers Poem | Introduction
During this rest period, the Baron Docteur reemerges as himself, but several years in the future, and proceeds to read aloud a detailed anatomy of the deceased Venus Hottentot. In-between the Baron Docteur's speech, The Bride-to-be reads her love letters aloud; foreshadowing a near-identical poem recited by the Baron Docteur to Venus in the past (i.e., the future, within the course of "Venus"). The Bride-to-be's poem: "My love for you, My Love, is artificial // Fabricated much like this epistle // Constructed with mans finest powrs // Will last through the days and the weeks and the hours.". The Baron Docteur's poem: "My love for you is artificial // Fabricated much like this epistle // Its crafted with my finest powers // To last through the days and the weeks and the hours.".
Venus (play) | Intermission (scene 16)
The second, included in the Post-Vulgate "Suite du Merlin" ("Suite-Huth" or the Huth "Merlin"), is a 'romantic' sequel that includes elements of the Vulgate "Lancelot". The third is an alternative version known as the "Livre d'Artus" ("Book of Arthur"), which too was written after the Vulgate Cycle had been completed.
Merlin (poem) | Prose and continuations
Similar puzzles surround the second poem in "Harmonium", "Invective Against Swans". Why would Stevens write an insult poem attacking swans? Why the aspic nipple in the third poem, "In the Carolinas"? What manner of nude "scuds the glitters" on a weed, as in "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"? Who is the giant in "The Plot Against the Giant" and why can he be undone by heavenly labials? What is a "Gubbinal"? Why does the listener in "The Snow Man" become "nothing himself" and behold "the nothing that is"? Is "The Emperor of Ice Cream" simply a nonsense ditty or does it have some discursive meaning? Is Crispin's voyage in "The Comedian as the Letter C" a success or a failure? What is the mistake that Caliper makes in "Last Looks at the Lilacs" when he scratches his buttocks and tells the divine ingenue that the bloom of lilacs is the fragrance of vegetal? Should the reader be amused or appalled by the remarkable funeral procession in "The Worms at Heaven's Gate"?
Harmonium (poetry collection) | Second edition: Table of Contents (1930)
The two parts of the poem were long thought to be a conflation of two entirely separate texts, especially as the chivalric concerns of the second half seem to directly contradict the message of humility contained in the first. Medievalist Ralph Hanna, who edited the text, felt that the first episode had been adapted by a second, less technically assured author, who added the Galeron section and ended with the original final stanza of the first poem. However, following the work of A. C. Spearing — who compared its structure to that of a diptych — the "Awntyrs" is now commonly seen as a unified work by a single poet, where the themes of the first half are reflected in the second.
The Awntyrs off Arthure | Textual criticism
William Shakespeare's erotic narrative poem "Venus and Adonis" (1593), a retelling of the courtship of Aphrodite and Adonis from Ovid's "Metamorphoses", was the most popular of all his works published within his own lifetime. Six editions of it were published before Shakespeare's death (more than any of his other works) and it enjoyed particularly strong popularity among young adults. In 1605, Richard Barnfield lauded it, declaring that the poem had placed Shakespeare's name "in fames immortall Booke". Despite this, the poem has received mixed reception from modern critics; Samuel Taylor Coleridge defended it, but Samuel Butler complained that it bored him and C.
Aphrodite | Literature
In Christopher's analysis, each line is composed of "two second-class paeons", each consisting of an iamb and a pyrrhus: ˘ ˘ − ˘. There is an additional rhyme or half-rhyme of the ends of the A or C lines with the first paeon of the B lines. Catherine McIlwaine called the poem "a new metrical experiment", noting that Tolkien read it to The Inklings, C. S. Lewis's literary group at Oxford.
Errantry | Metre
The "Metamorphoses" has exerted a considerable influence on literature and the arts, particularly of the West; scholar A. D. Melville says that "It may be doubted whether any poem has had so great an influence on the literature and art of Western civilization as the "Metamorphoses"." Although a majority of its stories do not originate with Ovid himself, but with such writers as Hesiod and Homer, for others the poem is their sole source. The influence of the poem on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer is extensive. In "The Canterbury Tales", the story of Coronis and Phoebus Apollo (Book II 531–632) is adapted to form the basis for The Manciple's Tale.
Metamorphoses | Influence
The third quatrain continues the metaphor of the nightingale and seasonal imagery to further stress that the poet's silence is not because their love is less pleasant. The nightingale is used as a metaphor to explain that just because he does not flatter the Fair Youth, does not mean that he loves less. As one scholar put it, "too much praise ceases to please". The poet explains his silence further in line 11, that the wild birds physically burden the tree branches as well as crowd the air with their songs. This may represent the myriad of love sonnets being published in attempt to flatter and please their muses.
Sonnet 102 | Quatrain 3
After Ovid: New Metamorphoses is a collection of poems inspired by Ovid's "Metamorphoses". Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun, the two editors of "After Ovid: New Metamorphoses", commissioned 42 poets from America, Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand to "translate, reinterpret, reflect on, or completely reimagine" Ovid's famous Metamorphoses. The poets include Alice Fulton, C.K. Williams, Mark Rudman, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.
After Ovid: New Metamorphoses | Introduction
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Three Shakespeare Songs | "The Cloud-Capp'd Towers"
Each poem consists of three stanzas of 4 + 4 + 5 lines, with the first two lines of the first stanza (1,2) repeated as the last two lines of the second stanza (7,8), and line 1 additionally repeated (13) to close the third stanza and the poem. The first poem is shown below.
Pierrot lunaire | Music and text
The metamorphoses themselves are often located metatextually within the poem, through grammatical or narratorial transformations. At other times, transformations are developed into humour or absurdity, such that, slowly, “the reader realizes he is being had”, or the very nature of transformation is questioned or subverted. This phenomenon is merely one aspect of Ovid's extensive use of illusion and disguise.
Metamorphoses | Metamorphosis
The poem is composed in stanzas of three lines, the first two glyconic and the third glyconic with dactylic expansion. That is, the first two lines of each stanza are of the form "× × ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯", and the third is in the form "× × ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯", where × is an anceps (a syllable that can be long or short), ˘ is a short syllable, and ¯ is a long syllable. It was part of Book V of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry, which may have contained poems in a number of different metres based on glyconics.
Sappho 94 | Content
Shakespeare's third quatrain is interesting in that it changes "the words used to characterize the negative aspects of lust". Lust becomes "perceptibly weaker toward the end of the poem" than in the start. In the beginning of the sonnet, Shakespeare uses the words "Murd'rous", "bloody", "savage" and "cruel" and replaces them in this quatrain with "a very woe" and "a dream".
Sonnet 129 | Quatrain 3
The novel's title is taken from the final scene of Shakespeare's final play, "The Tempest". At the end of a speech in which he promises to renounce magic, Prospero says, "And thence retire me to my Milan, where / Every third thought shall be my grave." The line is about considering one's mortality near life's end, and Barth's title invokes this theme.
Every Third Thought | Introduction
The first two extant stanzas detail Charaxos' arrival. In the first, the speaker reproaches the addressee for repeatedly saying that Charaxos will return "with his ship full", that only gods can know such things, and that the addressee should send her to pray to Hera for Charaxos' safe return. The third and fourth stanzas develop into a more general examination of human dependence on gods. The speaker asserts that while human fortunes are changeable ("fair winds swiftly follow harsh gales") Zeus gives good fortune to those he favours. In the final stanza, the speaker hopes that Larichos will "[lift] his head high" and "become an ανερ [man] in all senses", as Obbink puts it, and release the family from its troubles.
Brothers Poem | Content
The third part is a letter, written by Mrs. Anerton, explaining her life as Rendle’s muse and her love for the poet. However, her love was never requited and she became a « disappointed woman ». Because of that, she cannot live with Danyers nor let him love her. Having been considered solely as a muse by Rendle and never as a woman, Mrs. Anerton finds herself in a tragic situation.
The Muse's Tragedy | Introduction
The sonnet sequence is organized in four sections. In the first, fifty-five-poem section, Pamphilia determines her true feelings about her unfaithful lover, toward whom she is ambivalent throughout this section, though she affirms her choice to love Amphilanthus by its end. After a series of songs, the next section, of ten poems, takes on a darker tone as Pamphilia confronts doubt and jealously, but the end of the sequence finds her seeking forgiveness from Cupid, the god of love, to whom she promises a crown of sonnets as penance for her doubt. The crown's fourteen sonnets form the sequence's third section.
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus | Content
The poem is composed of three stanzas of heroic couplets (19 couplets total). Some of the rhymes are full (years/ears) and some are only partial (clergymen/thereupon). Ostensibly collaborating with one another, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stanzas are linked by an informal slant-rhyme scheme (e.g., “summer’s end | clergymen | thereupon;” “trade enough | name of love;” “yet we’d grown | hollow moon”). A quasi-sonnet appears with the 1st stanza, which is perhaps an allusion/homage to the “precedents out of beautiful old books” and the formalism of the eras preceding Yeats. Of its fourteen lines, the first thirteen are unbroken while the last is made of three iambs.
Adam's Curse (poem) | Structure
Shackford writes, "the relationships between the two poems are summed up as this; The theme is the lower or underworld, both devote many stanzas to the description of the underworld, the development of theme is proceeded by descriptions of natural aspects to the description of the listless beings who inhabit the underworld, and that both conclude the third section depicting a central dominate feminine figure."
The Garden of Proserpine | Critical response
Scholars have found it difficult to place the "Metamorphoses" in a genre. The poem has been considered as an epic or a type of epic (for example, an anti-epic or mock-epic); a "Kollektivgedicht" that pulls together a series of examples in miniature form, such as the epyllion; a sampling of one genre after another; or simply a narrative that refuses categorization. The poem is generally considered to meet the criteria for an epic; it is considerably long, relating over 250 narratives across fifteen books; it is composed in dactylic hexameter, the meter of both the ancient "Iliad" and "Odyssey", and the more contemporary epic "Aeneid"; and it treats the high literary subject of myth.
Metamorphoses | Contents
The dedication is followed by "The Argument", a prose paragraph that summarizes the historical context of the poem, which begins "in medias res".
The Rape of Lucrece | Introduction
Venus and Cupid are shown struck by grief. Adonis is brought in, dying from the wound given to him by the boar. He duets with Venus, and dies in her arms. As a lament she begins a funeral march, and the refrain is taken up by the pastoral characters (in reality, Venus' courtiers). The opera ends with the G minor chorus "Mourn for thy servant", a strong example of elegiac counterpoint.
Venus and Adonis (opera) | Act 3
The third book is chiefly and ostensibly concerned with animal husbandry. It consists of two principal parts, the first half is devoted to the selection of breed stock and the breeding of horses and cattle. It concludes with a description of the furor induced in all animals by sexual desire. The second half of the book is devoted to the care and protection of sheep and goats and their byproducts. It concludes with a description of the havoc and devastation caused by a plague in Noricum. Both halves begin with a short prologue called a proem. The poems invoke Greek and Italian gods and address such issues as Virgil's intention to honor both Caesar and his patron Maecenas, as well as his lofty poetic aspirations and the difficulty of the material to follow.
Georgics | Book Three
In this sonnet, the poet is urging the 'fair youth' to preserve something of himself and something of the image he sees in the mirror by fathering a child, "Now is the time that face should form another". The message is reiterated in the last lines of the poem: "But if thou live, remember'd not to be, / Die single, and thine image dies with thee." Not only will the youth die, but so will his image — the one in his mirror, and also his image that may be seen borne by his yet-to-be child.
Sonnet 3 | Analysis
(Directions 20-26): The second stage examines where the poet is presently. There are three areas, just offstage in the darkness.
... but the clouds ... | Stage 2
Three Poems is a poetry collection written by British writer Hannah Sullivan and published by Faber & Faber in 2018. The book is being reprinted in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This is Sullivan's first book of poetry, and it won the T.S. Eliot Prize (2018) for the best new poetry collection published in Great Britain or Ireland. Sullivan wrote short poems until she attended a poetry workshop taught by Jorie Graham; this is her first published long poem. When working on "Three Poems", she started out writing fragments before deciding for sure what she wanted to write about.
Three Poems | Introduction
This poem is full of satire, starting in the first line: "Five hours (and who can do it less in?) / By haughty Celia spent in dressing;" He starts out from the beginning commenting on the length of time it takes women to prepare themselves. He goes on into greater detail about the repulsive things he sees and finds: "As from within Pandora's box, / When Epimetheus oped the locks, / A sudden universal crew / Of humane evils upward flew, / He still was comforted to find / That hope at last remained behind. // So Strephon, lifting up the lid / To view what in the chest was hid, / The vapours flew from out the vent.
The Lady's Dressing Room | Analysis
The Rape of Lucrece (1594) is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Roman noblewoman Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, "Venus and Adonis" (1593), Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to compose a "graver labour". Accordingly, "The Rape of Lucrece" has a serious tone throughout. The poem begins with a prose dedication addressed directly to the Earl of Southampton, which begins, "The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end." It refers to the poem as a pamphlet, which describes the form of its original publication of 1594.
The Rape of Lucrece | Introduction
The poem comprises eighteen short poems which are grouped into two sections. The first is an autobiography of Ezra Pound himself, as indicated by the title of the first poem, which reads "E.P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre" ("Ezra Pound: Ode for the Choice of His Sepulchre"). The second section introduces us to the struggling poet "Mauberley"’s character, career and fate. Readers have been misled by the fact that Pound assigns to every poem a title or, alternatively, a number. Thus poem I, "E.P. Ode pour l'Election de Son Sépulchre", is followed by poems II-V, that are numbered, while poems VI to IX are again given individual titles.
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley | Structure
In line 10, the narrator uses the word "Phidian" again as a reference to the Elgin marbles, whose creation was thought to have been overseen by Phidias, a Grecian artist. As the poem progresses, the narrator begins to discuss the intrusion upon his indolence by the figures of Love, Ambition, and Poesy, and he suggests that the images have come to "steal away" his idle days. In the final stanzas, the figure of Poesy is described as a daemon which Helen Vendler suggests poses a direct threat to the idleness the poet wishes to retain. In the final lines, the poet once again rejects the three images: "Vanish, ye phantoms, from my idle spright, / Into the clouds, and never more return!" (lines 39–40) with the intention of once again enjoying the laziness from which the poem obtains its title.
John Keats's 1819 odes | Ode on Indolence
The union of the Devil and Sin produces the seven daughters: Pride, Envy, Ire, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lechery. Reason and Conscience are unable to save mankind from the daughters and their granddaughters. In the second third of "Mirour", God sends the seven Virtues who have granddaughters who oppose the Devil's forces. Much of the final third is an "extensive examination of the corruption of the Three Estates of society -- Church, State and Workers. Everyone is tainted." Repentance requires the intercession of the Virgin. The conclusion of the poem has been lost.
Mirour de l'Omme | Summary
Here are the verses from "Venus and Adonis": Torches are made to light, jewels to wear, Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use, Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear; Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse,
Shakespeare's sonnets | Fair Youth
He then claimed that Theodotes' visits to him there were a sign that he was conspiring with his enemies. Plato pleaded with Archytas, who persuaded Tarentum to send a vessel for him.
Seventh Letter | Resumption of the narrative of the third visit (345c–350b)
This poem was published as an appendix to Shakespeare's sonnets in 1609. Its authorship has been disputed by several scholars. In 2007 Brian Vickers, in his monograph, "Shakespeare, "A Lover's Complaint", and John Davies of Hereford", attributes the "Complaint" to John Davies. Other scholars continue to attribute it to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare apocrypha | "A Lover's Complaint"
In addition, 4 stanzas near the beginning of the first half (#53-#56) and 3 stanzas towards the end of the second half (#417-#419) are composed in the eight-line ballade form, instead of the seven-line rhyme royal in which the rest of the cycle is written (without further exception). This means, in effect, the poem has an "extra" seven lines (or the equivalent of one more "hidden" rhyme royal stanza) distributed across its two-halves – 4 lines in the first, 3 lines in the second. The line count for the three principal divisions of the structure therefore comes out as: Making a total of 2795 lines.
The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian | The seven ballade stanzas
The poem is 20 lines (five stanzas) long and written in Sapphic stanzas, a metre named after Sappho, which is composed of three long lines followed by one shorter line. The beginning of the poem is lost, but it is estimated that the complete work was probably between one and three stanzas longer. It lies within the genre of homecoming prayers; others of Sappho's works on this theme include fragments 5, 15 and 17. The narrative consists of an address to an unnamed listener, structured in two parallel sections, concerning two of Sappho's brothers, Charaxos and Larichos. The speaker hopes that Charaxos will return successfully from a trading voyage, and that Larichos will grow into manhood, and take up his position among the elites of society in Lesbos.
Brothers Poem | Content
The dramatic speech given by Hecuba in Book XIII of the "Metamorphoses" is the last full monologue of the epic. Both the first and last full monologues of this epic are delivered by women, which lends itself to analyzing the development of the female portrayal throughout the piece. Medea's speech, previously discussed, is rash and scattered, illustrating her emotional distress, while also showing the beginnings of the female oratory in the poem. In contrast, Hecuba's speech is polished and refined, showing not only the dignity of the fallen queen, even in her darkest times, but also emphasizing the growth of the portrayal of women throughout the epic.
Tragedy in Ovid's Metamorphoses | Hecuba
Those who pursue only reason and science are ignorant. Even our progress is not progress as we continue to repeat the same errors as the past. The third section discusses the rulers of secular society and their flaws. The fourth, which is a formal section, deploys a series of Baroque paradoxes in the context of the Good Friday mass. This past manner is regarded ironically by the poet in the fifth section as he looks back on his period of experimentation in 'the years of "l'entre deux guerres"' as 'largely wasted'. He welcomes approaching old age as a new opportunity to find renewal, although it might only be a rediscovery of 'what has been lost and found and lost again'.
East Coker (poem) | Poem
The Trois poèmes d'amour ("Three Love Poems") is a 1914 song cycle for voice and piano by Erik Satie. It is the only set of mélodies (French art songs) Satie composed to his own texts. In performance it lasts 2–3 minutes.
Trois poèmes d'amour | Introduction
The poem is structured as an address—possibly by Sappho herself—to an unknown person. The speaker chastises the addressee for saying repeatedly that Charaxos will return (possibly from a trading voyage), maintaining that his safety is in the hands of the gods and offering to pray to Hera for his return. The narrative then switches focus from Charaxos to Larichos, who the speaker hopes will relieve the family of their troubles when he becomes a man. Scholars tend to view the poem's significance more in historical rather than in literary terms. Research focuses on the identities of the speaker and the addressee, and their historical groundings.
Brothers Poem | Introduction
So begins, for example, the third sonnet of the first part:
Sonnets to Orpheus | The sonnets
A third descent by Dionysus to Hades is invented by Aristophanes in his comedy "The Frogs". Dionysus, as patron of the Athenian dramatic festival, the "Dionysia", wants to bring back to life one of the great tragedians. After a poetry slam, Aeschylus is chosen in preference to Euripides.
Dionysus | Other myths
The third manuscript contains 32 papers and is kept in Britain. The poem is dedicated to the Ghaznavid ruler, Mas'ud III.
Shahriyarnameh | Introduction