Ovid and the Bible

In 2008, Dr Ingo Gildenhard was awarded a Major Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2009 - 2012) for a project entitled:

Ovid & the Bible: Studies in the Cultural Imaginary of the West

Artists and writers from antiquity to the present day have brought the Bible and Ovid's Metamorphoses into dialogue with one another – as two canonical and authoritative texts that, however, frequently present conflicting views of the world. The historical record of this dialogue constitutes a rich body of evidence for investigating distinctive preoccupations in the Western cultural imaginary. This project focuses on four key themes (and their associated tensions), which it explores through detailed case studies in the interrelated reception of Ovid and the Bible: identity (essence ~ transformation), ethics (norm ~ transgression), historicity (progress ~ relapse), and truth (reality ~ fiction).