N.’s monograph is a slightly revised version of her Ph.D. thesis completed at the University of Manchester. Its aim is to bring the pastoral mode more prominently into scholarly discussions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, to show how the poem reshapes Virgilian pastoral through its dynamic interplay with epic. The book is organised into five main sections: Part 1, ‘“Pastoral” Encounters’; Part 2, ‘Female Voice, Pastoral, and Epic’; Part 3, ‘Pastoralised Laments’; Part 4, ‘Surgamus: solet esse grauis cantantibus umbra: Pastoral Ascent in the Metamorphoses’; and Part 5, ‘Pastoral, Golden Age, and the Metamorphoses’. These are framed by an introduction, which surveys previous scholarship on Ovid’s engagement with the pastoral genre and outlines N.’s methodological approach, and by a brief conclusion. Since the earlier sections (pp. 26–41) offer a thorough discussion of the book’s central themes and their development, including a detailed outline here may be redundant.

Part 1 examines early mythological narratives that foreground divine or semi-divine encounters within natural landscapes. The Pan and Syrinx episode (Met. 1.689–712) exemplifies how the tale of the syrinx’s creation thematises Ovid’s rewriting of pastoral poetry and highlights the sustained and significant presence of ‘pastoral’ musical performances that thread through the Metamorphoses as a whole. The musical contests of Apollo with Marsyas (Met. 6.382–400) and Pan (Met. 11.146–94) further expose the competitive and often violent dynamics underlying artistic creation, while the Mercury and Battus episode (Met. 2.685–707) reinforces pastoral elements to enrich Ovid’s generic redefinition of epic poetry. In these narratives Ovid reconfigures the Theocritean and Virgilian traditions of pastoral song contests to dramatise the uneasy negotiation between epic grandeur and pastoral simplicity that structures his literary enterprise. Yet, pastoral music, long a symbol of harmony, becomes entangled with themes of competition, punishment and, of course, transformation. Although N.’s intertextual analysis is particularly nuanced (she even traces echoes of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes in the Mercury and Battus episode), some of the intertextual connections she proposes remain rather tenuous or insufficiently supported by secondary bibliography (e.g. Met. 1.678–81 and Virg. Ecl. 1.79–80, already noted in the A. Barchiesi–G. Rosati commentary).

The next part revisits the theme of pastoral encounters, this time featuring exclusively female characters. The encounter (i.e. contest) between the epic Pierides and the pastoral Muses, re-enacted by an unnamed Muse (Met. 5.318–678), marks a pivotal moment in the poem. Drawing on L. Fulkerson and J. Stover’s concept of ‘repeated performance’, N. examines this episode in relation to gender and genre, arguing that the female voice plays a crucial role in the Metamorphoses’ generic innovation. This bold experimentation with gender and genre in epic poetry is also evident in Arethusa’s flight (Met. 5.486–508 and 572–641) and Galatea’s lament (Met. 13.623–14.582), both of whom bring female voice and agency into the pastoral settings of the Metamorphoses. Engaging productively with feminist Classicists such as E. Oliensis and A. Sharrock, N. shows how these female narratives articulate resistance to the masculine domination of the epic genre: Arethusa assumes the role of a migrating hero, while Galatea takes on the role of the Cyclops by recalling and reperforming Polyphemus’ song.

Part 3 focuses on the episodes of Narcissus (Met. 3.339–510), Marsyas (Met. 6.392–400), Cyparissus (Met. 10.106–47), Orpheus (Met. 10.1–11.66) and Adonis (Met. 10.503–59), in which attention turns to the themes of suffering and lamentation intertwined with the natural world. Lamentation constitutes a central element in the story of Narcissus, where Ovid redeploys the pastoral mode of mourning to bring together epic, pastoral and elegiac features. This blending of generic elements is further exemplified in the episode of Cyparissus, where, as N. observes, Ovid incorporates pastoral topoi of grief into the epic narrative, as he experiments with the interweaving of epic and pastoral modes of mourning. Cyparissus’ grief, in this sense, aligns more closely with Theocritus’ dirge for Daphnis in Idyll 1 than with Virgil’s Aeneid 7. This dialogue with pastoral poetry continues in the episode of Orpheus, whose lament reinvents him as a pastoral hero and aligns him with the heroic values of the Metamorphoses. At the same time, it serves as a symbol of poetic succession and generic interaction, echoing the lament of Marsyas and prefiguring the story of Venus and Adonis, which concludes Orpheus’ song. While N.’s concept of pastoralised laments is fruitful and illuminating, its application can at times seem somewhat elastic, since some of the episodes or the characters display only ‘quasi-pastoral’ features (as N. admits) rather than a fully developed pastoral character.

The next part investigates how Ovid’s treatment of Orpheus, Vertumnus–Pomona and Polyphemus–Galatea illustrates the poem’s thematic and generic elevation from pastoral simplicity towards epic complexity. Focusing on Orpheus’ second performance (Met. 10.86–739), N. argues that Ovid reconfigures the traditional pastoral character in a way that links Orpheus to both the Eclogues and the Georgics to explore the power and limitations of song as it moves from the pastoral to the epic genre. This process of generic elevation is further illustrated in the next story of Vertumnus and Pomona (Met. 14.623–771), which N. interprets as a pivotal moment in the Metamorphoses. In this episode Ovid signals the poem’s transition from the pastoral mode to an agricultural-didactic and Roman epic mode and uses the narrative to demonstrate how he reworks and ultimately ‘transfigures’ pastoral themes as the poem approaches its conclusion. Part 4 finishes with the ‘most famous pastoral episode’, the story of Polyphemus and Galatea (Met. 13.750–897), for which N. undertakes a close reading of Ovid’s text through its intertexts (primarily Theocritus and Virgil) in order to show, as she builds on the studies of J. Farrell and A. Barchiesi, how the episode constitutes a sophisticated meta-literary commentary on the shifting and blending of literary genres. In particular, the analysis highlights Ovid’s transformation of Polyphemus, to bring him within the realm of epic and, most importantly, ‘epicising’ the pastoral Cyclops. N.’s analysis is persuasive in tracing the poem’s generic evolution, though at times it rests on interpretive speculation, where the argument moves beyond textual observation into broader literary theorisation.

The final part examines Ovid’s complex reworking of epic, pastoral and the Golden Age in the Metamorphoses. N. convincingly shows how Ovid transforms the Hesiodic Myth of Ages (Met. 1.89–150), particularly the Golden Age, into a dynamic and ironic meditation on moral and cultural change. Rather than presenting it as irrevocably lost, as in Virgil’s Eclogues, Ovid exposes the contradictions within Augustan ideals of renewal, offering a more unsettling vision of transformation and decay in contrast to Virgil’s Eclogue 4. Particularly insightful is the analysis of Pythagoras’ speech (Met. 15.75–478), in which Ovid engages in both intertextual and intratextual rewriting of the ideology surrounding the revival of the Golden Age with clear political implications. The reading of the Midas episode (Met. 11.85–145), in which Ovid inscribes a perverted Golden Age, highlights the poet’s subversion of ‘golden’ virtue, while simultaneously illustrating the problematisation of abundance and the complex interplay between physical gold and the ideal of the Golden Age. This chapter sums up the book’s main point, namely that the Metamorphoses turns the pastoral ideal of simplicity into a thoughtful reflection on the fragility of moral and poetic values in a constantly changing world.

Overall, the monograph offers a bold and illuminating rethinking of Ovid’s Metamorphoses from the perspective of pastoral poetics. Combining meticulous research, close reading and theoretical sophistication, N. demonstrates how Ovid’s ‘epic of pastoral transformations’ dissolves rigid genre boundaries and reveals pastoral not as a static refuge but as a dynamic force reshaping epic form and feeling. Her intertextual (and intratextual) and diachronic approach, which extends from Homer to Ovid, yields valuable insights into the poem’s texture, voice and effect and ultimately serves to redefine the ecology of ancient genres by showing that in Ovid, as in poetry, transformation is both subject and method. The book is carefully produced and almost entirely free of typographical errors. At times, the distinction between ‘bucolic’ and ‘pastoral’ feels unnecessary or risks confusing readers. Nonetheless, these are minor issues that do not detract from the work’s value: as the first sustained examination of pastoral transformation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the book stands as a major contribution to Ovidian and genre studies and will be an indispensable resource for scholars and students of ancient poetics, intertextuality and the mutable boundaries of literary form.