Ovid in Restoration and Eighteenth‐Century England

Abstract

This chapter looks at Ovid's reception in England from the 1660s to the 1790s. Ovid was widely translated, imitated, and enjoyed across the Restoration and the eighteenth century, but he also remained controversial for his frank treatment of sexuality, his interest in pagan myth, and his playful wit. His influence was remarkably diverse. Poets like John Dryden and Alexander Pope drew inspiration from his work for their most outrageous and fanciful productions. Other writers and readers, meanwhile, were drawn to the Metamorphoses for what they saw as its psychological and descriptive realism, while a tradition of epistolary complaints modeled on the Heroides, many of them authored by women, addressed topics such as divorce law and slavery. Ovidian writing also fed into the early novel, with its attention to female experience and its use of epistolary form. In all these ways, Ovid's writings and influence helped shape the literature of Enlightenment England.

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