Ovid's extraordinary story of Thebes' founding and bloody unravelling spans two books of his epic poem, the Metamorphoses.

The first three of these books revolve mostly around a tormented love affair with a woman called Cynthia. The fourth book of poetry rests on more diverse subject matter and is notoriously the most opaque and elusive.

This book is a must for anyone interested in Augustan poetry, literary theory, or contemporary psychoanalytic studies. The readings are rigorous, the scholarship meticulous, and the theoretical approach profoundly sophisticated.

By bringing to the study of this major work of classical literature the themes of consciousness and desire dealt with in postmodern scholarship, Janan's book invites a new conversation among literary disciplines.