Abstract
This essay argues that Ovid’s Metamorphoses presents transformation as a worldview in which instability, desire, and ambiguity define human and divine existence. Written in the Augustan age defined by ideological order and moral regulations, Ovid’s fluid narrative structure resists conventional didactic certainty. This study examines how Ovid exposes the dangers of projection and the limits of agency when desire seeks to impose order on bodies and identities through the close reading of key myths (including Daphne and Apollo, Iphis and Ianthe, Narcissus, Pygmalion, and Orpheus). This essay then traces Ovid’s reception in Shakespeare’s drama, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the poetry of Russian exiles Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky, demonstrating how Ovid’s poetics adapts and survives throughout history. Finally, by situating Ovid within the author’s personal experience of cultural displacement, this research highlights Ovid’s enduring significance as a framework for understanding exile, identity, and change in the modern world.
Keywords: Reception, Ovid, Metamorphisis, Identity, Exile, Energy
Copyright © 2025 Scholar of Tomorrow. All SoT articles are distributed under the attribution non-commercial, with no derivative license. This means that anyone is free to share, copy, and distribute an unaltered article for non-commercial purposes provided the original author and source are credited.