The first study of Ovid, especially his Metamorphoses, as inherently visual literature, explaining his pervasive importance in our visual media.

This book presents the first systematic appreciation of Ovid's extensive influence on, and affinity with, modern visual culture. Some topics are directly related to Ovid; others exhibit features, characters, or themes analogous to those in his works. The book demonstrates the wide-ranging ramifications that Ovidian archetypes, especially from the Metamorphoses, have provoked in a modern artistic medium that did not exist in Ovid's time. It ranges from the earliest days of film history (Georges Méliès's discovery of screen metamorphosis) and theory (Gabriele D'Annunzio's fascination with the metamorphosis of Daphne; Sergei Eisenstein's concept of film sense) through silent films, classic sound films, commercial cinema, art-house and independent films to modernism and the C.G.I. era. Films by well-known directors, including Ingmar Bergman, Walerian Borowczyk, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Max Ophüls, Alain Resnais, and various others, are analyzed in detail.