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Links, but mostly Ovid and Hughes
Aug. 12th, 2004 11:14 amFirstly, I changed my default icon again, since ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
twinkledru created such a beautiful one of my favourite pair of sisters. Secondly, fernwithy wrote an intriguing analysis of how BTVS and HP use monsters as metaphors, here. (I also admire the way she dealt with a troll.) Thirdly, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
penknife posted the next chapter of "Fear the Rest", her great work-in-progress about the way the enmity between the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants developed from a common start, Erik and Jean Grey pov mostly. She linked the previous chapters, if you missed those. I shy away from WIPs normally, but this is just to die for.
***
Watch me vent my inner ancient authors/poetry fangirl. Or: Why fanfic writers ought to read Ovid. Well, not just him, of course. But the thing is, what both the Greeks and the Romans did (and then the rest of the world for 2000 years) was to take a basic stock of stories and characters and then to give them their own interpretation. Sounds familiar?
Ovid's Metamorphoses is probably one of the most well-known collection of myths, and writers continue to draw on him to this day. Whether you're watching Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream or Titus Andronicus, or reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, notably the volumes Fables and Reflections and Brief Lives, you're seeing adaptions from the Metamorphoses.
There are several translations and collections (mostly a selection of the most famous myths, not the entire thing), but my favourite is Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid, because it's really more than a translation. It's a poet responding to another poet with a recreation. While both Ovid and Hughes were fascinated by passion, they also were very different in other ways; Hughes lacked Ovid's urban elegeance, and I don't think he'd have been interested in translating the Ars Amatoria, for example. But he had a totally unsentimental and powerful take on the world of animals and myths, and the Metamorphoses were ideally suited for this.
An example of what Hughes does in Tales of Ovid in terms of bringing his own language to render Ovid's vision is this excerpt from the introductory tale of the four ages. I'll first quote Hughes and then a literal translation.
( Fierce Poetry )
twinkledru created such a beautiful one of my favourite pair of sisters. Secondly, fernwithy wrote an intriguing analysis of how BTVS and HP use monsters as metaphors, here. (I also admire the way she dealt with a troll.) Thirdly, penknife posted the next chapter of "Fear the Rest", her great work-in-progress about the way the enmity between the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants developed from a common start, Erik and Jean Grey pov mostly. She linked the previous chapters, if you missed those. I shy away from WIPs normally, but this is just to die for. ***
Watch me vent my inner ancient authors/poetry fangirl. Or: Why fanfic writers ought to read Ovid. Well, not just him, of course. But the thing is, what both the Greeks and the Romans did (and then the rest of the world for 2000 years) was to take a basic stock of stories and characters and then to give them their own interpretation. Sounds familiar?
Ovid's Metamorphoses is probably one of the most well-known collection of myths, and writers continue to draw on him to this day. Whether you're watching Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream or Titus Andronicus, or reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, notably the volumes Fables and Reflections and Brief Lives, you're seeing adaptions from the Metamorphoses.
There are several translations and collections (mostly a selection of the most famous myths, not the entire thing), but my favourite is Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid, because it's really more than a translation. It's a poet responding to another poet with a recreation. While both Ovid and Hughes were fascinated by passion, they also were very different in other ways; Hughes lacked Ovid's urban elegeance, and I don't think he'd have been interested in translating the Ars Amatoria, for example. But he had a totally unsentimental and powerful take on the world of animals and myths, and the Metamorphoses were ideally suited for this.
An example of what Hughes does in Tales of Ovid in terms of bringing his own language to render Ovid's vision is this excerpt from the introductory tale of the four ages. I'll first quote Hughes and then a literal translation.
( Fierce Poetry )
