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INSANE: Ovid - The Real Truth

'I have different goals this spring' – Matteo Jorgenson turns spring metamorphosis into a Tirreno-Adriatico podium opportunity

American moves up to third overall despite focussing on later goals in the Ardennes

Cycling News

Is this love? Don’t be Heathcliff and Cathy – what you should watch, read and play this week

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is a loose (very loose) adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel. The film is, as the director has attested, the intense, “unhinged”, gothic story she remembers reading as a 14-year-old. As such, it is full of imagined passages and heightened romance and violence. It’s truly Fennellian in…

The Conversation

Fall in love Roman-style by playing board games

For ancient Romans, many of the gestures now associated with Valentine’s Day would be unfamiliar, if not completely puzzling. Love and desire were not confined to a single day, nor expressed through standardised tokens of romance. There were no cards written (or forgotten), flowers purchased (at inflated prices) or eateries…

The Conversation

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Culture Digest: The best things to do, hear, see or watch in Europe this week

Wuthering Heights hits cinemas, Aardman Animations celebrate 50 years of stop-motion classics, and the Berlinale Film Festival begins. Here's what's in store this week.

Euronews

Volcanic vulvas and hermaphrodite marble: Ovid’s Metamorphoses reshaped at the Rijksmuseum

Artists from Bernini to Louise Bourgeois are brought together in a new exhibition exploring the uncomfortable erotic parables of the ancient Roman poet

The Guardian - UK

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is all about mothers

Even if you haven’t heard of Ovid, you almost certainly know some of his stories. His most famous work, the Metamorphoses, is a Latin epic poem composed of hundreds of tales of mythical transformations, many of which are still being told and retold today.

The Conversation

The story of Apollo and Daphne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses needs a new translation for the #MeToo era

The story of Apollo and Daphne was written around the year zero by Roman poet Ovid in the Metamorphoses. Ovid was a trainee lawyer and student of rhetoric. In the story, a woman named Daphne becomes a laurel tree to escape the unwanted advances of the sun god, Apollo.

The Conversation

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Poem of the week: An Explanation of Doily by Gwyneth Lewis

A strange, humorous, mysterious window out of trauma is both desolate and decorative

The Guardian - UK

No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes review – a thrilling take on the Golden Fleece myth

Medea tells her side of the story in a reimagining of the ancient Greek stories that puts women centre stage

The Guardian - UK

50 Funny Myth Memes That May Have You Laughing Like Hades At Family Drama

Was mythology really meant to be this funny?

Bored Panda

Think modern dating is tough? It was just as bad in ancient times

ANALYSIS : Konstantine Panegyres reveals what finding love was like in Ancient Greece and Rome - and what lessons we can take into the modern world

The Independent UK

Avoid bad breath, don’t pick partners when drunk: ancient dating tips to find modern love

To love and be loved is something most people want in their lives.

The Conversation

Stepmothers, relax, you’ll always be wicked but true love is worth it

Two new surveys confirm that women who take on children from an earlier marriage will almost always be seen as witches

The Guardian - UK

Botticelli’s Primavera review – lucid study of a Renaissance masterpiece

Howard Burton’s scholarly look at the companion painting to The Birth of Venus provides a calm and instructive commentary

The Guardian - UK

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The Guardian - UK

The best theatre to stream this month: Starlight Express, Nye, Beat the Devil and more

A cast recording for the souped-up train musical is released, Michael Sheen plays the NHS hero at the National and David Hare delivers his Covid memoir

The Conversation

A brief history of the muses: the Greek goddesses who provided divine inspiration for ancient poets

In the beginning, there was just one, unnamed, muse. The blind bard Homer (a poet born around around 850BC) invoked her with the words “Sing, daughter of Zeus” in the first lines of his epic poem, the Odyssey.

Evening Standard

Best books about Greek mythology to learn the classic tales of ancient history

From immortalised classical epics to lesser-known myths

Reason

Salman Rushdie: 'Literature Is Powerful, Writers Are Fragile'

"If we can't trust ourselves as a culture to accommodate ideas we don't like," the novelist said at the Library of Congress, "then our ideas lose their value as well, because they become authoritarian."

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The Conversation

A brief history of abortion – from ancient Egyptian herbs to fighting stigma today

You might be forgiven for thinking of abortion as a particularly modern phenomenon. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that abortion has been a constant feature of social life for thousands of years. The history of abortion is often told as a legal one, yet abortion has continued regardless…

The Conversation

Climate change is destroying reefs, but the effects are more than ecological – coral's been woven into culture and spirituality for centuries

Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast on Aug. 30, 2023, bringing surging seas and winds over 100 mph. Meanwhile, another climate emergency has been unfolding along Florida’s coast this summer: a marine heat wave bleaching corals throughout the world’s third-largest barrier reef.

The Guardian - AU

Euphoria review – Cate Blanchett voices a tiger in this visually beautiful takedown of capitalism, but where’s the fury?

Melbourne town hall, Rising festivalJulian Rosefeldt’s magnificent and exhausting film, starring the Oscar winner and Giancarlo Esposito, reverts to evasive surrealist flourishes just as it threatens to become truly angry

The Guardian - UK

The North Shore by Ben Tufnell review – turning art and myth into narrative

The discovery of a body on the beach provides the pivotal moment in an essayistic novel that lacks propulsion and pace

The Conversation

Caveat emptor: a new book on the best lines in Latin misses the bigger picture

One of my favourite Roman artefacts to show visiting school groups or beginner’s Latin classes is a floor mosaic from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii. The mosaic depicts a chained dog accompanied by the Latin words, CAVE CANEM (“beware of the dog”).

The Conversation

Did clitorises strike fear into the Greeks and Romans?

If an anatomical description of the clitoris only appeared in some French school text books as recently as 2017, that’s because the seat of female pleasure, known by this name since at least 1559, was deeply taboo for so long.

The Conversation

Don’t underestimate Cupid – he’s not the chubby cherub you associate with Valentine’s Day

Ah, Valentine’s Day: that Hallmark holiday of greeting cards and chocolates, its bloody origins almost entirely forgotten over the last 2,000 years!

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