A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course When Madeline Miller’s novel Circe came out in 2018, I put it on my list of things to read — but I wasn’t sure I’d like it. Sometimes, reading novels based on classical literature feels like work to me…

A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course When I’m out of the classroom and doing research, I specialize in the political rhetoric of the late Roman republic, a generation before Ovid. So I got really excited about the long paired speeches in Book 13 of the…

A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course The Iliad doesn’t tell the whole story of the Trojan War. It tells the story of “The Wrath of Achilles” nine years into that war, and ends when Achilles’ wrath has run its course, not with the fall of…

A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course I guess I wasn’t at my sharpest this week — blame it on the pandemic — because I didn’t really think about the importance of the presence of Morpheus, a god of dreams, in Book 11 of the MetaMORPHoses…

A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course In Book 10, Ovid gives way to another poet, Orpheus. Orpheus’ story starts with a tragedy: the death of his beloved Eurydice, bitten by a poisonous snake at their fateful wedding. Orpheus handles his trauma by singing, and the…

A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course This week, in lieu of a field trip we had planned, I asked my students to do a virtual scavenger hunt, finding and comparing images of the god or hero of their choice. I was a little surprised at…

A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course This week, something we all really needed: a (mostly) pleasant story with a happy ending in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. A story about hospitality and sharing food, which feels all the more important today, as my neighbors very kindly pick up…

A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course In any other semester, Medea’s adventures flying around the Mediterranean in a chariot drawn by dragons would be the star of Book 7 (and I’ll get to that). But this semester, spring 2020, we all took special notice of…

A blog about teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a classical mythology course In preparing to teach this mythology class, I leafed through a copy of Ted Hughes’ Tales From Ovid. I was struck as I read it by how much Ted Hughes’ version of the Metamorphoses resembled a horror movie. The…