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

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

Laurel Fulkerson (Author)

9780521117814, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 July 2009

200 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.3 kg

'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

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.

Introduction
1. Reading dangerously: Phyllis, Dido, Ariadne, and Medea
2. Reading the future: Hypsipyle, Medea, and Oenone
3. Benefits of communal writing: Canace and Hypermestra
4. A feminine reading of epic: Briseis and Hermione
5. Reading magically: Deianira and Laodamia
6. Reading like a virgin: Phaedra and Ariadne
7. Caveat lector: thoughts on gender and power
Appendix A. The authenticity (and 'authenticity') of Heroides 15
Bibliography
Index
Index Locorum.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]