In Ovid's Metamorphoses, existence is perpetual transformation. Humans and gods become plants and animals, stones and stars-or something in between. No rigid distinctions remain untroubled. In his own time and in ours, Ovid's work challenges fundamental assumptions about the universe and humans' place in it.
Metamorphoses Reimagined offers a twenty-first-century retelling of Ovid's masterpiece that decenters the human. Michael Marder reinvents the text in new genres-letters, essays, confessions, prayers, poetic fragments, and dramatic dialogues, among others-some picking up where the original left off, others reconceiving the narrative in alternative forms. Marder's metamorphoses invert protagonists' relationships and reinterpret their transformations, playing with stylistic adaptations and foregrounding nonanthropocentric points of view. Above all, they explore the metamorphosis of language itself and ask in what, if any, sense the notion and the figure of the human are worth holding onto today.
Providing fresh perspective on Ovid's classic in light of contemporary concerns, Metamorphoses Reimagined is a work of breathtaking philosophical, literary, and linguistic experimentation, proposing creative ways to write and think, to be and become.
| ISBN: | 9780231212540 |
| Publication date: | 30th September 2025 |
| Author: | Michael Marder |
| Publisher: | Columbia University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 344 pages |
| Genres: |
Poetry Phenomenology and Existentialism |
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, existence is perpetual transformation. Humans and gods become plants and animals, stones and stars-or something in between. No rigid distinctions remain untroubled. In his own time and in ours, Ovid's work challenges fundamental assumptions about the universe and humans' place in it.
Metamorphoses Reimagined offers a twenty-first-century retelling of Ovid's masterpiece that decenters the human. Michael Marder reinvents the text in new genres-letters, essays, confessions, prayers, poetic fragments, and dramatic dialogues, among others-some picking up where the original left off, others reconceiving the narrative in alternative forms. Marder's metamorphoses invert protagonists' relationships and reinterpret their transformations, playing with stylistic adaptations and foregrounding nonanthropocentric points of view. Above all, they explore the metamorphosis of language itself and ask in what, if any, sense the notion and the figure of the human are worth holding onto today.
Providing fresh perspective on Ovid's classic in light of contemporary concerns, Metamorphoses Reimagined is a work of breathtaking philosophical, literary, and linguistic experimentation, proposing creative ways to write and think, to be and become.
Metamorphoses Reimagined features in the following genres: Poetry, Phenomenology and Existentialism
Metamorphoses Reimagined is available in Hardback, Paperback
Metamorphoses Reimagined was written by Michael Marder and published by Columbia University Press
Metamorphoses Reimagined has 344 pages