The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the Heroides

by Laurel Fulkerson

• ISBN13: 9780521846721
• ISBN10: 0521846722
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 naïve 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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	viii
List of abbreviations	x
Introduction	1	(22)
1 Reading dangerously: Phyllis, Dido, Ariadne, and Medea	23	(17)
2 Reading the future?: Hypsipyle, Medea, and Oenone	40	(27)
3 Benefits of communal writing: Canace and Hypermestra	67	(20)
4 A feminine reading of epic: Briseis and Hermione	87	(20)
5 Reading magically: Deianira and Laodamia	107	(15)
6 Reading like a virgin: Phaedra and Ariadne	122	(21)
7 Caveat lector: thoughts on gender and power	143	(9)
Appendix: The authenticity (and 'authenticity) of Heroides 15	152	(7)
Bibliography	159	(12)
Index	171	(8)
Index Locorum	179