[lbo-talk] Blake's "London" / Ovid

[Carrol Cox]

The story of Ovid is sort of weird. I think it could be said that from 
Provence & Dante through Pope Ovid was The Poet's Poet. And then 
something happened. Pope's 'biographer,' Spence, called Pope's love of 
Ovid "odd" or "curious" (I forget precisely, but it was something like 
that.) At mid-century, Warton called it "bad taste." And Johnson, 
looking for a 'bad' simile (in his discussion of Pope's Alps simile) 
picks one from Ovid (not identified, but it is almost certainly Daphne 
fleeing from Apollo), and says the two things compared (a rabbit's 
flight and Daphne's) are too similar. He assumes that the point is how 
_fast_ she runs, the banality of "running as fast as a rabbit." But 
surely Ovid is focused not on her speed but on here emotional response 
to Apollo.

And then Ovid is almost ignored until Pound & othrs began to pay 
attention to himin the 20th-c.

An early 19th-c edition of Ovid for school use cut out all the 'dirty' 
passages -- but then the editor's scholarly conscience go the better of 
him, and he printed all the omitted passages in the back. Very popular 
with schoolboys.

*Carrol