帝政ローマ最初期を代表する詩人オウィディウス（紀元前43－西暦18年）が登場した時代と文学的背景を明らかにするとともに、その作品、恋愛、変身譚、ローマの年中行事、アウグストゥス帝の命による配流、名声をもたらした才気とウィットあふれる革新的な作品群、そしてシェイクスピアからベリーニまで、後世の文学や芸術に与えた絶大な影響を紹介します。興味深い生涯を送り、個人的な感情や自伝的要素を詠んだ作品は今なお今日性を失っておらず、色褪せない魅力を放っています。(cf. Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics); The Love Poems (Oxford World's Classics) ほか)
  

• Explores the core themes running throughout Ovid's poetic works
• Sets the poet and his writing in the wider literary and social context
• Discusses Ovid's own turbulent personal life, including his fall from grace and subsequent exile

　　　
"Vivam" is the very last word of Ovid's masterpiece, the Metamorphoses: "I shall live." If we're still reading it two millennia after Ovid's death, this is by definition a remarkably accurate prophecy. Ovid was not the only ancient author with aspirations to be read for eternity, but no poet of the Greco-Roman world has had a deeper or more lasting impact on subsequent literature and art than he can claim. In the present day no Greek or Roman poet is as accessible, to artists, writers, or the general reader: Ovid's voice remains a compellingly contemporary one, as modern as it seemed to his contemporaries in Augustan Rome. But Ovid was also a man of his time, his own story fatally entwined with that of the first emperor Augustus, and the poetry he wrote channels in its own way the cultural and political upheavals of the contemporary city, its public life, sexual mores, religion, and urban landscape, while also exploiting the superbly rich store of poetic convention that Greek literature and his Roman predecessors had bequeathed to him.
　　
This Very Short Introduction explains Ovid's background, social and literary, and introduces his poetry, on love, metamorphosis, Roman festivals, and his own exile, a restlessly innovative oeuvre driven by the irrepressible ingenium or wit for which he was famous. Llewelyn Morgan also explores Ovid's immense influence on later literature and art, spanning from Shakespeare to Bernini. Throughout, Ovid's poetry is revealed as enduringly scintillating, his personal story compelling, and the issues his life and poetry raise of continuing relevance and interest.