John of Garland, “Integumenta Ovidii”

The renowned scholar-poet John of Garland wrote the Integumenta Ovidii ("Allegories on Ovid") in early thirteenth-century Paris at a time of renewed interest in Classical Latin literature. In this short poem, John offers a series of dense, highly allusive allegories on various Greek and Roman myths in Ovid's Metamorphoses. This important but difficult work has fascinated and challenged generations of modern students and scholars. The text is here edited and translated for the first time in 90 years, drawing on the evidence of over two dozen manuscripts. Comprehensive explanatory notes help readers to understand John's condensed allegories in their medieval context. Textual notes discuss the various difficulties in the transmitted text of the poem, and offer several improvements on the texts of the older editions.