Rethinking Ovid: The Commentary Tradition

Abstract

“Rethinking Ovid: The Commentary Tradition” explicates the disparate Ovidian commentary traditions that circulated throughout Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Offering the first overview of the various traditions used to interpret and frame the Metamorphoses during the Middle Ages, this chapter examines the exegetical methods and the cultural contexts that developed these reading strategies as well as their rhetorical applications, thereby establishing the foundational principles that prompted medieval writers to weave Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian lore into the same works. Yet, unlike previous studies of Ovidian commentaries, this chapter reveals that medieval writers learned to compose using a variety of exegetical strategies, not only the moralizing practices to which they have traditionally been connected.