SOURCE: Braden, Gordon. “Golding's Ovid.” In The Classics and English Renaissance Poetry: Three Case Studies, pp. 1-54. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.

In the following excerpt, Braden compares Golding's Metamorphosis to other translations of Ovid's poetry to demonstrate how Golding's version reflects—and does not reflect—his Puritanism, sense of humor, and humanist bent. Braden also addresses Golding's influence as the creator of one of the most-read poems in the English language during the flowering of Renaissance poetry and verse drama.

Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphosis (as Golding spelled it) was the first complete English version of that poem to be published, and its appearance—four books in 1565, the complete work in 1567—was an important event, a major contribution to what was becoming a systematic, cooperative effort to make the Greek and Roman classics available to a new and wider audience. Golding was immediately hailed as the...