Lineages
Every great book stands on older ones. Homer gave Virgil his wanderings and his war; Virgil walked Dante through Hell. Start from a classic and follow its line, one work at a time, across the map.
Its heirs
Dante Alighieri, AD 1320*
After Virgil, Ovid is the poet Dante draws on most. The Metamorphoses lends the Comedy its myths and its changes of shape: thieves who turn into serpents in Hell, and Dante himself, transformed like Glaucus, as he rises into Paradise.
Source: Wikipedia, Divine Comedy
“Ovid is given less explicit praise in the poem, but besides Virgil, Dante uses Ovid as a source more than any other poet, mostly through metaphors and fantastical episodes based on those in the Metamorphoses.” Read it there
Geoffrey Chaucer, AD 1387
The Manciple's Tale is Ovid's story of Phoebus and the crow, from Book 2 of the Metamorphoses: the white bird that tells Apollo of his wife's infidelity and is turned black for it.
Source: Wikipedia, Metamorphoses
“In The Canterbury Tales, the story of Coronis and Phoebus Apollo (Book II 531–632) is adapted to form the basis for The Manciple's Tale.” Read it there
William Shakespeare, AD 1594
Lavinia's fate repeats Philomela's in Book 6 of Ovid: raped and silenced, her tongue cut out. Shakespeare puts the book itself on stage, as Lavinia turns its pages to show her family what was done to her, and Titus takes a revenge as terrible as Procne's.
Source: Wikipedia, Titus Andronicus
“The primary source for the rape and mutilation of Lavinia, as well as Titus's subsequent revenge, is Ovid's Metamorphoses (c. AD 8), which is featured in the play itself when Lavinia uses it to help explain to Titus and Marcus what happened to her.” Read it there
William Shakespeare, AD 1597
Behind the Veronese story lies Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe: young lovers kept apart by their parents, a secret meeting, and a death that follows from the mistaken belief that the other is already dead.
Source: Wikipedia, Romeo and Juliet
“One of these is Pyramus and Thisbe, from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which contains parallels to Shakespeare's story: the lovers' parents despise each other, and Pyramus falsely believes his lover Thisbe is dead.” Read it there
William Shakespeare, AD 1600
The mechanicals' play within the play, Pyramus and Thisbe, comes from Book 4 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, turned into broad farce. Ovid's world of changed shapes hangs over the whole wood, where Bottom is given an ass's head.
Source: Wikipedia, A Midsummer Night's Dream
“Though it is not a translation or adaptation of an earlier work, various sources such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" served as inspiration.” Read it there
William Shakespeare, AD 1623
Prospero's farewell to his magic, 'Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves', closely follows the witch Medea's invocation in Book 7 of Ovid, which Shakespeare knew in Arthur Golding's translation.
Source: Wikipedia, The Tempest
“A source for Prospero's speech in act five, in which he bids farewell to magic is an invocation by the sorceress Medea found in Ovid's poem Metamorphoses.” Read it there
John Milton, AD 1667
Milton knew Ovid closely and draws on him throughout, most memorably for Eve, who first sees herself reflected in a pool and is drawn to her own image, as Narcissus was.
Source: Wikipedia, Metamorphoses
“Among other English writers for whom the Metamorphoses was an inspiration are John Milton—who made use of it in Paradise Lost, considered his magnum opus, and evidently knew it well—and Edmund Spenser.” Read it there
James Joyce, AD 1918
Stephen's surname is Dedalus, after Ovid's maker of wings, and the novel's epigraph comes from Book 8 of the Metamorphoses: 'he turns his mind to unknown arts'. At the end Stephen, like Daedalus, is ready to fly.
Source: Wikipedia, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
“The myth of Daedalus and Icarus has parallels in the structure of the novel, and gives Stephen his surname, as well as the epigraph containing a quote from Ovid's Metamorphoses.” Read it there