The Metamorphoses Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

Water is a recurrent image in Ovid's poem because it is constantly changing; in this way, water illustrates what Ovid sees as the fundamental truth about the cosmos: that it is constantly changing....

In The Metamorphoses, plants often function as a way for people to live on after death. Think of Narcissus, who turns into a flower (also called "narcissus"), or Baucis and Philemon, who turn into...

OK, words are symbols to begin with. (In the sense that a word symbolizes something in the world that it refers to.) But Ovid actually takes this a bit further. He loves calling attention to words,...