Arthur Golding’s Metamorphoses

Abstract

Golding’s translation of the first complete version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1567) influenced authors (including Shakespeare), teachers, and, undoubtedly, most literate Elizabethans. It proved to be a popular text, but that popularity was mostly a Reformation-era phenomenon, and after 1612 the text was not reprinted until the twentieth century. Modern scholars have debated numerous issues: the nature and merits of Golding’s translation, with many judging it to be an odd transposition of the original; its engagement with the religious and political polemics of the day; and the degree to which the translation might or might not follow the moralizing approaches of previous allegorical traditions. This essay demonstrates the didactic, protreptic nature of the text and examines how Golding—a devout Calvinist—employed numerous literary devices to illustrate the frightful consequences that result from ungodly human desires and behaviors. He reinvented the text by creating an intertwined relationship between text and paratext to form the foundation of his protreptic method. With his translation Golding sought to highlight the growth of sinful behavior and to persuade readers toward his particular religious, political, and cultural concerns with contemporary English society. As the Elizabethan world died, so did the interest in Golding’s Metamorphoses; it no longer spoke to people in a significant way.