Epic Poetry

Ovid's sensuous and witty poem brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation, often as a result of love or lust, in which men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including

Orlando Furioso ("The Frenzy of Orlando", more literally "Mad Orlando") is an Italian romantic epic by Ludovico Ariosto, published in its complete form in 1532 and exerting a wide influence on later culture. It is a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's unfinished romance Orlando Innamorato ("Orlando in Love"). From the backdrop of war between Charlemagne and his Christian paladins, and the Saracen army attempting to invade Europe, the

In his satiric poem Don Juan, Lord Byron refigures the legend as a man easily seduced by women, rather than as a dangerous womanizer. When the first two cantos were anonymously published in 1819, they were criticized for being immoral. They were also immensely popular. Byron only completed 16 cantos, leaving the 17th unwritten when he died in 1824. Don Juan is commonly considered to be his masterpiece.