Marlowe and Ovid: translation, violence and desire

© 2014 Dr. Corinna Verity BoxThis thesis is a study of Christopher Marlowe’s reception of Ovid. It provides a close examination of Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Amores followed by a series of analyses of Marlowe’s ongoing use of Ovid in his poetic and dramatic works. It begins by outlining the historical, theoretical and literary backgrounds to Marlowe’s translation, focusing on Tudor translation theory, Elizabethan education and other Renaissance translators of Ovid. It then engages in a close and detailed analysis of Marlowe’s translation with couplet by couplet comparisons to Ovid’s original Latin. This analysis shows both Marlowe’s departures from accepted translation practice in terms of his use of metre and provision of extra-textual material and the meticulous and nuanced way in which he renders Ovid’s words in English. Marlowe carefully recreates both Ovid’s words and style in English and in doing so develops a poetic style which continues to exercise an influence on his original works. Marlowe’s early schooling in translating Ovid can then be seen in his later works, particularly in the portrayal of desire and eroticism. The love scenes of his plays almost all betray some Ovidian presence and the amatory material in Hero and Leander is based upon Ovid’s amatory works. One of the most Ovidian aspects of Marlowe’s amatory scenes is the intertwining of desire with violence. The experience of feeling desire and of being desired come laden with the threat of violence in Marlowe’s Ovidian passages. This is further linked to a portrayal of poetry as associated with both desire and violence. Creation is depicted as arising from strife and both are important for the experience of desire and this is seen most strongly in Hero and Leander. Marlowe’s means of thinking about these three processes stems largely from Ovid. Throughout these works, Marlowe’s use of Ovid is always mediated by his own reading of Ovid’s texts. The vision of what an Ovidian amatory world, Ovidian style and Ovidian techniques or devices constitute is always Marlowe’s vision of this. He both defines himself as an Ovidian poet and defines what it is to be an Ovidian poet