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The Ovidian Heroine as Author

Reading, Writing, and Community in the Heroides

Laurel Fulkerson author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:14th Jul '05

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The Ovidian Heroine as Author cover

An examination of Ovid's Heroides which portrays its fictional female writers as a community of authors.

This works represents a new departure in the treatment of Ovid's Heroides, letters by women deserted by men. It portrays the women as agents rather than victims, employing textual strategies for their own ends. Combining traditional scholarship with recent criticism, it is required reading for any student of Latin literature.Ovid's Heroides, a catalogue of letters by women who have been deserted, has too frequently been examined as merely a lament. In a new departure, this book portrays the women of the Heroides as a community of authors. Combining close readings of the texts and their mythological backgrounds with critical methods, the book argues that the points of similarity between the different letters of the Heroides, so often derided by modern critics, represent a brilliant exploitation of intratextuality, in which the Ovidian heroine self-consciously fashions herself as an alluding author influenced by what she has read within the Heroides. Far from being naive and impotent victims, therefore, the heroines are remarkably astute, if not always successful, at adapting textual strategies that they perceive as useful for attaining their own ends. With this new approach Professor Fulkerson shows that the Heroides articulate a fictional poetic, mirroring contemporary practices of poetic composition.

Review of the hardback: ' ... of interest to classicists and medievalists, as well as scholars with interests in gender studies. The strengths of this book are numerous: the argument is clearly stated and each chapter is tightly organized. Fulkerton's writing is lucid and vivd ... a wonderful organizational structure for encouraging students to draw connections between the various letters. ' Bryn Mawr Classical Review
'The book is written in an agreeable style that is pleasant to read. … the author's arguments are expressed in vivid and clear rhetoric that will likely make the book enjoyable to laymen and scholars alike.' De novis libris iudicia

ISBN: 9780521846721

Dimensions: 237mm x 160mm x 21mm

Weight: 470g

200 pages