In the Fall of 2020, at Princeton University, classicist Yelena Baraz and writer Jhumpa Lahiri team-taught a seminar entitled “Ancient Plots, Modern Twists” which examined how ancient Greek and Roman plots were appropriated, reused, and reimagined by modern and contemporary writers. The course was divided into four thematic clusters: Abandonment, Monster, Plague, and Metamorphosis. Selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses served as a point of reference for each of these clusters. The collaboration between Baraz and Lahiri led to their embarking, in 2021, on a co-translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in English for the Modern Library. In this presentation, Jhumpa Lahiri will discuss the genesis, creative process, and challenges of “modernizing” Ovid’s Latin text for a new generation of English readers, revisiting themes of abandonment, monstrosity, plague and metamorphosis to frame the presentation.
Click here to register.
Jhumpa Lahiri is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection. Other books include The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and National Book Award, and the essay collection, Translating Myself and Others. Since 2015, Lahiri has been writing fiction, essays, and poetry in Italian: In Altre Parole (In Other Words), Il Vestito dei libri (The Clothing of Books), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts), Il quaderno di Nerina, and Racconti romani. The translator of three novels by Domenico Starnone and editor of The Penguin Classics Book of Italian Short Stories, Lahiri received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama and was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella.
Co-sponsor: Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, Columbia University
photo: (c) Elena Seibert
