Ovidian Bibliofictions and the Tudor Book

Focusing on the postclassical discourses that Ovid’s poetry stimulated, this study explores how Ovid’s English protégés - including Isabella Whitney, William Shakespeare and Michael Drayton - replicated and expanded upon the Roman poet’s distinctive and frequently remarked ’bookishness’ in their own adaptations of his works. Reid analyzes how Ovidian-inspired mythologies and bibliographical aetiologies informed the sixteenth-century creation, reproduction, and representation of books, and provides alternative models for thinking about the dynamics of reception, adaptation, and imitatio.