Fables, Ancient and Modern

Fables, Ancient and Modern,
by Dryden , published 1700 .

Verse paraphrases of tales by Ovid , Boccaccio , and Chaucer are interspersed with poems of Dryden's own, and together with the preface, in itself one of the most important examples of Dryden's criticism, they compose themselves into an Ovidian and Catholic meditation on the place of nature, sex, and violence in the flux of history.