Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

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Ronolio
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Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

Post by Ronolio »

I am about to start covering Ovid's Metamorphoses in my Advanced Placement Latin classes and I am looking for a good commentary on books 11-15. I have William S. Anderson's text and commentary for the 1st 10 books, but for whatever reason, he did not continue on to the conclusion of the poem. Can anyone recommend a good single volume commentary on those books, or if none is available, on the entire work?
Last edited by Ronolio on Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hylander
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Re: Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

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There are several volumes of commentaries on the entire Metamorphoses in the Aris & Phillips series:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss ... amorphoses

Unfortunately, however, these might not be suitable for your pedagogical purposes because they provide a facing-page English translation.

There are individual commentaries with text on the last three books (without English translation) in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss ... amorphoses

I haven't used any of the above (and I'm not a teacher), but both series are highly regarded and adhere to high standards (maybe a bit too advanced for high-school students--but AP Latin students are probably up to the challenge).

The Metamorphoses is such a vast work, with so much to comment on. It must be an enormous undertaking to produce a commentary on the whole thing!
Bill Walderman

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Re: Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

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Ronolio
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Re: Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

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Thank you for the input. I have ordered D.E. Hill's from the Aris and Phillips series. The fact that they have facing English is not really an issue as I provide the students the selections for which they are responsible. Essentially I wanted a classroom resource that they could consult as an aide in the event of difficulty with certain passages. Hopefully it will be worth the investment. I do still find myself wondering why Anderson did not complete the work.
Last edited by Ronolio on Sat Feb 20, 2016 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hylander
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Re: Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

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I should have noted that, consistent with the format of the Aris & Phillips series, the lemmas of Hill's notes will be in English, and there generally will be little guidance on grammar and linguistic questions--the English translation is intended to address those issues.
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Re: Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

Post by mwh »

"I do still find myself wondering why Anderson did not complete the work."

This review might give a clue. http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1997/97.9.11.html

I think you’ll find that Donald Hill is (a) good, and (b) very English. Also, as Hylander notes, he gives little help with the Latin other than by way of the translation. For AP classes that could be a good thing?

Ronolio
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Re: Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

Post by Ronolio »

Thanks again, all for the input. Finally my copies of the D.E. Hill's translation and commentary have arrived. Apparently it takes a while to ship things from Australia to the U.S. In just a quick perusal, I think the commentary will be sufficient for my purposes. I find the facing English helpful with high school students as they can see a correlating rendition, thus gaining some insight on the individual words, and also see how stilted a line by line almost literal translation can be. I do wish that more commentaries were done in the manner of the Sophron edition of the Aeneid (Williams and Lauren), i.e. text at the top of page and commentary below. Call me lazy, but that is just much easier to work with -and you can feel as though you have worked through more, at least in terms of pages :wink: .

J Wren
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Re: Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses 11-15

Post by J Wren »

Hello, in case anyone is still interested in this. I believe Anderson passed the baton to Garth Tissol to do the commentary on books 11-15. Tissol got his PhD at UC Berkeley, where Anderson taught. Tissol's cv (linked to on this page: http://classics.emory.edu/home/people/garth-tissol.html) says that he has a contract with the Univ. of OK Press for it (that's the press that did Anderson's two volumes). Tissol was also a co-editor of a festschrift for Anderson some years ago, and he's written a lot of other things on Ovid.

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