Mythical and Legendary Narrative in Ovid's Fasti

This book analyses the mythical and legendary narratives in Ovid's Fasti as narrative and concentrates on the neglected literary aspects of these stories. It combines traditional tools of literary criticism with more modern techniques (taken especially from narratology and intertextuality).
From a narratological viewpoint it covers important features such as aperture, closure, characterization, internal narrators, description, space, time and cinematic technique. On the intertextual level it examines the narratives' complex relationship with Virgil, Livy and Ovid's own earlier works.
Recent criticism on the Fasti has addressed various elements (religious, historical, political, astronomical etc.), but detailed narrative study has been wanting. This book fills that gap, to provide a more informed and balanced appreciation of this multifaceted poem aimed at classicists and literary critics in general (for whom all the Latin is translated).

Paul Murgatroyd, MA Cambridge, Ph.D. London, is Professor of Classics at McMaster University. He has published 6 books and over 60 articles on Latin and Greek literature. His particular interests lie in Roman elegy (with commentaries on Tibullus, Ovid and Johannes Secundus) and the study of narrative.

'…a welcome comprehensive treatment of narrative in the Fasti…the presence of meticulous scholarship and absence of unexplained recondite jargon, the tempered didactic tone, the rhetorical flourished (clever asides aside), and even M.’s frequent, if justifiable, implicit and explicit claims to being “first” in his multilateral analyses, all contribute to the creation of an engaging, pawky, even Ovidian, reading of the mythical and legendary narrative episodes in the Fasti…this book is a worthy addition to the volumes of Mnemosyne Supplementa…this book deserves a place on the shelves of every academic library. It is a book rich with instructive insights for students and scholars alike.'
Garrett Jacobsen, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2005.