The Itchy Tweed

You could spend a lifetime reading the secondary material about Ovid's Metmorphoses and then another few lifetimes exploring all the artistic and literary products that have a link to the poem. Here are some starting points.

Scholarly Words on Paper

For those who recognize, as Callimachus did, that “a big book is a great evil”, Oxford's Very Short Introductions series is invaluable: https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/9780198837688.001.0001/actrade-9780198837688

Geared at a general audience but with expert and up-to-date scholarly knowledge, things like the Cambridge Companion to Ovid

For understanding Roman literature in his context, I highly recommend Elaine Fantham's Roman Literary Culture. She makes Roman literature understandable and approachable, in strokes both broad and detailed.

Conte's Latin Literature: A History is a standard handbook which provides a useful summary of both Ovid and his life.

If you have access to a university library (because otherwise you should certainly not pay Brill's ridiculous prices and because it is probably online through the library), something like Brill's Companion to Ovid is chock full of Ovidian goodness: https://brill.com/view/title/7460?language=en

Also usually available with online university library access, A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid published by Wiley has great material in it to help navigate the complicated (and incredibly rich) world of Ovidian reception studies.

Some additional recommendations from the Oxford Bibliographies entry on Ovid's Metamorphoses:

Barkan, L. 1986. The gods made flesh: Metamorphosis and the pursuit of paganism. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press. A magisterial study on the history of metamorphosis from classical antiquity through the Renaissance, with generous treatment of Ovid, Dante, and Shakespeare.

Brown, S. A. 2005. Ovid: Myth and Metamorphosis. Ancients in Action. London: Bristol Classical. A vivid primer to the epic, with detailed treatment of the stories of Apollo and Daphne, Actaeon, Philomela, Arachne, and Pygmalion.

Due, O. S. 1974. Changing forms: Studies in the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. A sensible introduction to the epic, of enduring value in particular for its material on Ovid’s debts to Homer, Callimachus, Lucretius, and Horace.

Fantham, E. 2004. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. A sober, thematically organized introduction to the poem, with study both of Ovid’s antecedents and the reception of the epic.

Fratantuono, L. 2011. Madness transformed: A reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. A detailed running commentary on the entire epic, with one chapter devoted to each book of the poem.

Lively, G. 2010. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: A Reader’s Guide. London and New York: Continuum. A concise overview of the epic, with useful treatments of both the work and its afterlife.

Ovid's Metamorphoses after antiquity

The history of Ovid's influence (or reception) is extensive. So too are the studies. A Handbook of Reception of Ovid, mentioned above, is a good place to start.

Brown, S. A. 1999. The Metamorphosis of Ovid: From Chaucer to Ted Hughes and Martindale, C., ed. 1990. Ovid renewed: Ovidian influences on literature and art from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century are also useful for tracing the big history of Ovidian reception.

For the past century, check out Ziolkowski's Ovid and the Moderns.

A recent collection inspired by Ovid is After Ovid, including work by Ted Hughes, Jorie Graham, Seamus Heaney, and many others.

Ovid Illustrated is a collection of early print illustrations with texts of Ovid.

Ancient Reception of Myth in general

As questions of the reception of the Metamorphoses specifically are often difficult to extract from questions about the reception or reworking of particular myths and legends, you can also find out about various strands of Ovidian reception by following the myths.

The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1900s is invaluable and detailed. (It also goes on sale fairly regularly.)

The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature is also a very detailed resource (in multiple volumes).

There is of course A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Myth.

Among the many databases that can be explored, check out Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry

Video Ovid

There is, inevitably, a BBC Ovid with the RSC:

Mary Beard on Ovid (from the set of activities around the Titian exhibition at the Tate):

More obscure, but for those true Ovidio-philes, the launch of the International Ovidian Society last year (including FSU's own Laurel Fulkerson) and a chance to work on your Italian and/or your scholar-ese for over 9 hours (yay!!!):

Finally, I find it delicious that Honore's film Metamorphoses (2014) is of course available to stream on ovid.tv, a platform for independent film: https://www.ovid.tv/videos/metamorphoses

Musical Ovid

Britten, Six Metamorphoses after Ovid:

Philip Glass, Metamorphoses:

Patricia Barber, Persephone (from Mythologies):

Theatrical Ovid

For Mary Zimmerman's production, check out https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/conversation-mary-zimmermans-metamorphoses. You can purchase the play: https://www.amazon.com/Metamorphoses-Play-Mary-Zimmerman/dp/0810119803. The original professional production at the Lookingglass theater: https://lookingglasstheatre.org/event/metamorphoses/

TV Ovid

Perhaps one of the most timely of reinterpretations of Ovid, a list of all the TV tropes that one finds in Ovid's Metamorphoses: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheMetamorphoses

e.g. > A Load of Bull: The Minotaur.

More to come...