Ovid strings together the mythology of transformation, from the world's creation through Jove's loves, Actaeon's death, and Daedalus's flight, in a sprawling verse chain of gods and mortals remade.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell: “The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: Jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold.”
Why Read the Classics by Italo Calvino: “Essay 'Ovid and Universal Contiguity' (primary subject)”
The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton: “Quid me mihi detrahis? —OVID, Metamorphoses, Book VI”
Necessity by Jo Walton: Epigraph: "And now the work is done that cannot be erased by Jupiter's anger, fire and sword, nor the gnawing tooth of time..." —OVID, envoi to Metamorphoses
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: “First, though, I intend to finish a commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses.”
Contact by Carl Sagan: “he would declaim to the astonished onlookers from Book 6 of Ovid's Metamorphoses: Monarch of Violence, rolling on clouds...”
Italo Calvino by Martin McLaughlin: “the central city Baucis recalls the myth of Baucis and Philemon, which is also the central tale of Ovid's Metamorphoses”
The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino: Discussed at length in "Ovid and Universal Contiguity" as aiming to represent all that is worth telling of what has been passed down by literature
The Essays by Michel de Montaigne: “The first taste which I had for books came to me from the pleasure in reading the fables of Ovid's Metamorphoses; for, being about seven or eight years old, I gave up all other diversions to read them…”
Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant: “Modo maxima rerum, Tot generis, natisque potens... Nunc trahor exul, inops. --Ovid, Metamorphoses. xiii”
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais: “been as little dreamed of by Homer, as the Gospel sacraments were by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, though a certain gulligut friar (Frere Lubin croquelardon.) and true bacon-picker would have undertaken to prove it”