Overview

Founded in 1945 by P. O. Kristeller, the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum has evolved over time to reflect developments in the field of reception studies; each article begins with an overview of a Greek or Latin author's reception and contains detailed and accurate information about manuscripts and early printed editions along with copious quotations of paratextual material. Volume 12 presents the reception history of only one author, Ovid, and of only one of his works, the Metamorphoses. Textual reactions to this work throughout the centuries vary from literal to allegorical and moralizing, from faithful translations to paraphrases, from serious and scholarly commentary to satirical and recontextualizing parody, thus showing this poem's broad cultural appeal.

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As it embarks on its second half-century, the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum continues to provide scholars of the reception of classical Greek and Roman texts with thoroughly researched documentation on Latin commentaries and translations into European languages up to roughly 1600. A worthy and welcome addition to the series, the twelfth volume also exhibits several important innovations. It is the first to be devoted to a single work by a single author, and given that the work is Ovid's Metamorphoses, the field covered is vast, illustrating the manifold ways generations of students and readers understood and then drew fresh inspiration from the poem's repertoire of story and character, all the more challenging in Christian Europe as Ovid's mythic world is populated by pagan gods and the Roman poet celebrates no passion more than erotic love. The enumeration of the commentaries and the explication of the range of interpretive and pedagogical approaches they display is the culmination of Frank Coulson's life's work on these texts, while the exhaustive accounting of the translations is the contribution of Harald Anderson. Credit is also given to Harry Levy, who worked on the printed commentaries on the Metamorphoses before his death. Encouraged by series editor Greti Dinkova-Bruun, the authors include generous citations from the prefatory material of the texts and, importantly, extend coverage deep into the seventeenth century, making the volume exceptionally valuable to all students of medieval and early modern European literature. The authors expand the value of their coverage by citing and providing links to online materials to the point that the text in some areas becomes virtual hypertext. The volume concludes with five very useful indices. -- Ralph Hexter, University of California, Davis

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