Renaissance Tales of Desire: Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, Theseus and Ariadne, Ceyx and Alcione and Orpheus His Journey

This revised and augmented edition of four mythological tales translated from Ovid during the Elizabethan period calls attention to the genre of the epyllion and suggests a possible literary influence on later poets and playwrights such as Marlowe and Shakespeare. Indeed, while openly concerned with the central theme of metamorphosis, these short narrative poems express deep male anxiety about female desire. Elizabethan epyllia always seemed prone to renegotiate the orthodoxy of early modern desire in a masculine, somewhat misogynous sphere, addressing the issues of mutability in a world of large-scale social changes. Finally, beyond the restricted readership of the spheres of the Inns of court for which they were originally intended, these works reached a much wider audience. And as students of early modern English poetry and Renaissance scholars in general are likely to find out, these witty poetic variations and rhetorical displays represent a real embarrassment of riches.