Hippomenes challenges Atalanta, the fastest runner in the land, to a life-or-death footrace. Greedy King Midas gets his wish that all he touches turns gold. The imprisoned inventor Daedalus figures a way to fly himself and his son to freedom. But what twists might the gods have in mind for these mortals? Read this book to find out.
Improve students' reading fluency while providing fun and purposeful practice and performance through Reader's Theater Scripts. Engage students through Reader's Theater to make learning fun while building knowledge of Texas history and the significant people, events, and places that make Texas what it is today. Improve vocabulary and comprehension with repeated practice and performance of the scripts along with TEKS-based activities in the lesson plans, which include word study, comprehension questions, and extension activities. Make your classroom a Reader's Theater classroom today!
A Honeycomb for Aphrodite: Reflections on Ovid's Metamorphoses by A. S. Kline. Illustrated with engravings by Crispijn van de Pass. With this innovative analysis of Ovid's Metamorphoses the author provides an essential companion volume to his translation of the work itself. The nature and structure of Ovid's brilliant retelling of Greek myths is explained, while emphasising his broadly humanist approach. The concept of loosely connected tales linked and sustained by the author's style, personality, and world-view, is contrasted with the epic mode as exemplified by Virgil's Aeneid, while seen as being justified in its own right. The exploration of structure is deepened by detailed discussion of the key concepts and themes which run throughout the work. These range from the religious and mythical, to the social and ethical, and highlight Ovid's prime areas of interest and personal attitudes and values, while placing the Metamorphoses within the context of his other literary achievements, and the milieu of Augustan Rome. The manner in which these common concepts and themes are echoed and expanded through disparate myths and tales is highlighted by copious references to specific examples and illustrative passages in the work, allowing the reader rapid access to the supporting evidence within the text itself. A Honeycomb for Aphrodite argues for a more thoughtful appreciation of Ovid's major creation, claiming that his design is more than just a vivid and charming re-telling of the Greek originals, but a deeply-felt humanist development, in which civilised Roman values re-interpret the ancient natural and spiritual environment of Ovid's Greek sources in a manner destined to influence the whole of European culture, not simply the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Ovid is here seen as strengthening and enriching an alternative view of life to that presented by imperialistic, heroic or tragic literature; a view in which tenderness and pathos, pity and moderation transform the human, and humanise the world. This and other texts available from Poetry in Translation (www.poetryintranslation.com).
"A Book of Myths" deals in a most entertaining manner with the mythology of Greece and Rome and many other noted lands. Added to the pleasure of the story there is the lure of the legend and the spell of old ways and customs. Not only many of the most celebrated are retold, but also many of the less well-known tales. The aim of the author, it is stated, has been to simplify for those who are not erudite scholars the stories of mythology, to which constant reference is made not only in classic, but in modern poetry, and to direct the attention of readers to poems which are not already known to them. Included are tales of Prometheus, Pygmalion, Orpheus, Perseus, King Midas, Pan, the Lorelei, Baldur and many more.
Bulfinch's Mythology is a compilation of general audience works by Latinist Thomas Bulfinch. It delves into the roots and stories within classical mythologies all around the world.
"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. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
