His frequent bathos and comic attempts in serious moments can however make him seem more of a Puck, not the intended Oberon. He mocks the epic tradition and its hyperbolic gravity and pushes the limits of the epic genre to the full. It could be said that it is a work fuelled by egocentricity. It is definable as a super-epic, though, as it best formulates what Ovid himself was striving to create a 'carmen perpetuum', as he vows in his opening in Book I. Constructed of approximately 250 epylia interwoven into one continuous narrative, it is still debated whether or not this has the technical and narrative qualifications for an ancient epic. The poem is perhaps best described as in a genre of its own - a super-epic. The Latin poet Ovid composed his renowned Metamorphoses during the reign of the emperor Augustus. Then o'er the bounding billows shall we fly, English Literature Essays John Dryden: Translation of Ovid
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