Word: ovidian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...peculiar and original genius of Novelist John Cheever to see his chosen subject-the American middle class entering the second decade of the Affluent Society-as figures in an Ovidian netherworld of demons. Commuterland, derided by cartoonists and deplored by sociologists as the preserve of the dull-spirited status seeker, is given by Cheever's fables the dignity of the classical theater...
Echoed and re-echoed throughout the Cantos are two ancient legends-the Homeric tale of Odysseus' journey through Hades, the Ovidian tale of the seamen who, while kidnapping Bacchus, were transformed to dolphins as their ship, becalmed, sprouted grape-laden vines. The legends appear indiscriminately in ancient. Renaissance and modern dress, according to whichever time or whatever place Poet Pound's eruditely literate, expatriated sensibilities lead him to be thinking about. The resultant confusion is only skin-deep -since to any man, anywhere, any time, life may seem like Hell; and some sea-change in men or matter...