Review

Reviewed Work(s): Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the
Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century by Charles Martindale
Review by: Richard Jenkyns
Source: The Review of English Studies, Vol. 41, No. 161 (Feb., 1990), pp. 151-152
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/516641
Accessed: 30-10-2024 04:46 UTC

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 REVIEWS 151

thus ends, appropriately, by

form amid 'the heterogeneou
contemporary life'.
University of Nottingham GAVIN COLOGNE-BROOKES

Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle
Ages to the Twentieth Century. Edited by CHARLES MARTINDALE. Pp.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ?29-50 net.
Charles Martindale's admirable introduction to this book goes far to explain
it is so welcome. He brings out both Ovid's own quality (less mannered tha
underestimated by modern critics because they cannot find clever things to
him) and the way in which his blend of grace, wit, and seriousness appealed
generations. This is a supple essay, extending even to art and music (there
paragraph on Bernini's Apollo and Daphne). There follow two fascinating cha
Niall Rudd tracing the use of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus in both litera
art from late antiquity to the twentieth century. The range of material c
stunning; if a single moral can be drawn, it is perhaps that Ovid's openn
narrator-he glances at the possibilities of moral interpretation, only to p
by-leaves a large field for later minds to work upon.
Next come three medieval chapters. C. W. Grocock studies the use of O
Latin narrative poem by Gilo of Paris, a twelfth-century monk and diploma
Cooper examines Chaucer, arguing that he is surprisingly 'modern' in his at
Ovid, neglecting the moralizing interpretations current in his time and explo
for his sheer narrative skill. This is persuasive; less convincing seems the cla
the Ovidian narratives of The Canterbury Tales study the problem of the unr
of language (though the reviewer is out of his depth here). The palm am
medieval chapters must go to Bruce Harbert's piece on Gower, which dem
how different is the assimilation of a classical source by a medieval writer from
of allusion that we are accustomed to in later (or for that matter classical Lat
Harbert is also the only contributor to find any influence from Ovid's exile p
The Renaissance is introduced by Colin Burrow's subtle-sometimes
over-subtle-essay on The Faerie Queene, which argues that the Ovidian tone helps
Spenser to explore the imperfections of asceticism and the relation between sensuality
and morality. Laurence Lerner on 'Ovid and the Elizabethans' has some attractive
observations on the epyllion, but this is too slight and arbitrary a treatment of so
important a topic (incidentally, the mistranslation on p. 125 destroys Ovid's point).
A. D. Nuttall's essay on Ovid's Narcissus and Richard II is hardly a study of
influence in a conventional sense, since he allows that Shakespeare probably had no
thought of Narcissus when writing the play; but he has fascinating things to say about
both poets.
Nigel Llewellyn's 'Illustrating Ovid' is a useful survey. It ends with a comparison of
different painters' treatments of the Europa myth-interesting, though weakened by
implausible claims. If it is crass to miss the 'bitter play on human frailty' in Boucher,
some of us are irredeemable in our crassness. David Hopkins contributes an excellent
piece on Dryden: it is easy enough to analyse bad translations, but he shows us how
thoughtful a translator of Ovid Dryden was. Rachel Trickett asks why the Heroides
were so popular with the English Augustans. It cannot be said that she demonstrates
this to be so, but some interesting things are said about Pope's Eloisa to Abelard and
that belated Augustan Byron (Julia's letter in Don Juan).
Jane M. Miller discusses some nineteenth-century 'versions of Pygmalion'. Why,
one wonders, was this myth so popular at this date? She seems not to know of the use

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152 REVIEWS

of
of it
it in
in Vernon
VernonLee's
Lee'sMiss
Miss
Brown.
Brown. That
That
omission
omission
doesdoes
not surprise;
not surprise;
the omission
the omission
of of
Hazlitt's
Hazlitt's LiberAmoris,
LiberAmoris, ororThe
TheNewNewPygmalion
Pygmalion does.does.
Norman
Norman
VanceVance
wrestles
wrestles
manfully
manfully
with
with thetheungrateful
ungratefultopictopic
ofof'Ovid
'Ovid
andandthethe
Nineteenth
NineteenthCentury',
Century',
and finds
and finds
more more
material
material among
amongthe theRomantics
Romantics thanthan
thetheVictorians.
Victorians.
Stephen
Stephen
MedcalfMedcalf
ends the
endsbook
the book
intriguingly
intriguinglywith withOvid's
Ovid'sMetamorphoses
Metamorphoses andand
The The
Waste
Waste
Land.Land.
He does
He not
doestake
not take
Eliot's
Eliot's notorious
notoriousnotenoteononTiresias
Tiresiastootoo
seriously,
seriously,
but but
findsfinds
Ovid'sOvid's
influence
influence
none the
none the
less
less in
in some
someunexpected
unexpected places.
places.He He
seessees
thethe
Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses as important,
as important,
however,
however,
for
for being
beingunlike
unlikeTheTheWaste
WasteLand:
Land:their
their
melting
melting
transitions
transitions
are very
are very
different
different
from from
Eliot's
Eliot's abrupt
abruptstructures
structures and
andtheir
their
theme
theme fromfrom
a poem
a poem
whichwhich
abandons
abandons
hope of
hope
helpof help
from
from classical
classicalantiquity.
antiquity.
A short review of a collective work is bound to be a breathless scramble. Taken as a
whole, Ovid Renewed concentrates upon the influence of the Metamorphoses, and for
the most part this seems to correspond to the facts of literary history, though the
book's most obvious defect is the lack of an adequate treatment of the Amores, so
important in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The obvious danger, that
Ovid's influence be taken as simply synonymous with the use of classical mythology, is
usually avoided, though when one contributor asks (p. 122) whether Milton is
thinking of Ovid when he puts Orpheus into Lycidas, the answer must be, 'No:
Virgil.' But the book maintains a generally high standard; it is one of the best studies
of classical influence available.

Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford RICHARD JENKYNS

Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. By

viii+172. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Cloth, ?15;
paper, ?4-95 net.
Much modern critical theory is expressed in a difficult and arcane language, and is
not immediately accessible, but Anne Sheppard's study is conducted in a more readily
understandable manner, and forms a good introduction to problems of aesthetics.
One of its merits is that it is not confined to literature, and is prepared to deal with the
other arts, in an attempt to evolve an aesthetic flexible and comprehensive enough to
cope with a number of media simultaneously. To consider the field in this breadth
exposes the inadequacies of logocentricity. One way to approach the central problem
of definition, which Sheppard takes in Chapter 5, is to concentrate not on objects
which might be aesthetically interesting, but on states of mind in the recipients,
including the elusive 'aesthetic emotion'. But to do full justice to this concept, which
many theorists regard as a hopelessly elusive will-o'-the-wisp, and account for its
operation in all the media would require considerably more space than is allowed here.
Incidentally, my view would be that the 'aesthetic emotion' should not be relegated to
the museum of defunct theories.
From time to time lack of subtlety vitiates this introduction. We get off to a bumpy
start with this statement: 'When we contemplate Constable's The Hay Wain we
[realize] that it portrays a particular English scene' (p. 10). Immediately I balk at this.
I remember that when I saw the Constable exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1976 a
very disconcerting pair of pictures was juxtaposed. They were both ostensibly of
Dedham Lock and Mill, one of 1819, the other of 1820, but with significant
differences; and two other versions of the scene, an oil sketch in the Victoria and
Albert and a drawing in the Huntington, contain further significant variations. One
loses faith in all of them, since once the combinatory and complex organizing
processes have occurred in Constable's mind, the pictures cancel each other out as
representations of a particular place. It is more like an arrangement, influenced by

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