This is the first book-length study to reconstruct the experiences of the abandoned heroines of the Heroides, which have been largely ignored by past criticism. Dr Spentzou seeks ways to isolate, characterize, and release the female voice and experience within Ovid's male-authored text. Building on a wide range of ancient as well as modern images and reflections on gender and writing, the book attempts to map the relationship between gendered sensitivities and experienceand generic expression and choices. Dr Spentzou uses the insight gained by the boom of intertextual studies in recent Latin scholarship to go a step further and address explicitly the ideologies of intertextual studies. This is a book about readers and reading, just as much as about women and gender, and it isalso an in-depth study of the intricate and heated negotiations behind the interpretative act.

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.

This is the first book-length study to reconstruct the experiences of the abandoned heroines of the Heroides, which have been largely ignored by past criticism. Dr Spentzou seeks ways to isolate, characterize, and release the female voice and experience within Ovid's male-authored text. Building on a wide range of ancient as well as modern images and reflections on gender and writing, the book attempts to map the relationship between gendered sensitivities and experienceand generic expression and choices. Dr Spentzou uses the insight gained by the boom of intertextual studies in recent Latin scholarship to go a step further and address explicitly the ideologies of intertextual studies. This is a book about readers and reading, just as much as about women and gender, and it isalso an in-depth study of the intricate and heated negotiations behind the interpretative act.

In the twenty-one poems of the Heroides, Ovid gave voice to the heroines and heroes of epic and myth. These deeply moving literary epistles reveal the happiness and torment of love, as the writers tell of their pain at separation, forgiveness of infidelity or anger at betrayal. The faithful Penelope wonders at the suspiciously long absence of Ulysses, while Dido bitterly reproaches Aeneas for too eagerly leaving her bed to follow his destiny, and Sappho - the only historical figure portrayed here - describes her passion for the cruelly rejecting Phaon. In the poetic letters between Paris and Helen the lovers seem oblivious to the tragedy prophesied for them, while in another exchange the youthful Leander asserts his foolhardy eagerness to risk his life to be with his beloved Hero.

This volume offers up-to-date translations of all 21 epistles of Ovid’s Heroides. Each letter is accompanied by a preface explaining the mythological background, and an essay offering critical remarks on the poem, and discussion of the heroine and her treatment elsewhere in Classical literature. Where relevant, reception in later literature, film, music and art, and feminist aspects of the myth are also covered. The book is augmented by an introduction covering Ovid's life and works, the Augustan background, originality of the Heroides, dating, authenticity, and reception. This is a vital new resource for anyone studying the poetry of Ovid, classical myth, or women in the ancient world. A useful glossary of characters mentioned in the Heroides concludes the book.

This is the first book-length study to reconstruct the experiences of the abandoned heroines of the Heroides, which have been largely ignored by past criticism. Dr Spentzou seeks ways to isolate, characterize, and release the female voice and experience within Ovid's male-authored text. Building on a wide range of ancient as well as modern images and reflections on gender and writing, the book attempts to map the relationship between gendered sensitivities and experience and generic expression and choices. Dr Spentzou uses the insight gained by the boom of intertextual studies in recent Latin scholarship to go a step further and address explicitly the ideologies of intertextual studies. This is a book about readers and reading, just as much as about women and gender, and it is also an in-depth study of the intricate and heated negotiations behind the interpretative act.

In Ovid's "Heroides" and the Augustan Principate, Megan O. Drinkwater makes a compelling case for the importance of Ovid's Heroides as a historical and literary testament, elegantly illustrating how Ovid's literary innovation expresses the unease felt by a citizenry subject to the erosion of their public identity.

This is the OCR-endorsed publication from Bloomsbury for the Latin A-Level (Group 4) prescription of Ovid's Heroides, giving full Latin text, commentary and vocabulary for Heroides I lines 1–68, and Heroides VII lines 1–140, with a detailed introduction that also covers the prescribed text to be read in English. Ovid's Heroides is a unique collection of poetry, in which famous mythological heroines write letters to the men who have abandoned them. They offer a new perspective on the otherwise male-centred mythological tradition. Heroides I (from Penelope) and VII (from Dido) respond to the most famous Classical epics, Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, by presenting a new, less positive, angle on the two famous epic heroes. Through his heroines' unique voices, Ovid plays with literary tradition, inviting us all to take a side: epic heroism or loyalty in love? Resources are available on the Companion Website.

This collection of essays examines the ways Ovid's diverse œuvre has been translated, rewritten, adapted, and responded to by a range of French and Francophone women from the Renaissance to the present. It aims to reveal lesser-known voices in Ovidian reception studies, and to offer a wider historical perspective on the complex question of Ovid and gender. Ranging from Renaissance poetry to contemporary creative-criticism, it charts an understudied strand of reception studies, emphasizing how a longer view allows us to explore and challenge the notion of a female tradition of Ovidian reception. The range of genres analysed here—poetry, verse and prose translation, theatre, epistolary fiction, autofiction, autobiography, film, creative critique, and novels—also reflect the diversity of the Ovidian texts in reception from the Heroides to the Metamorphoses, from the Amores to the Ars Amatoria, from the Tristia to the Fasti. The study brings an array of critical approaches to bear on well-known authors such as George Sand, Julia Kristeva, and Marguerite Yourcenar, as well as less-known figures, from contemporary writer Linda Lê to the early modern Catherine and Madeline Des Roches, exploring exile, identity, queerness, displacement, voice, expectations of modesty, the poetics of translation, and the problems posed by Ovid's erotized violence, to name just some of the volume's rich themes. The epilogue by translator and novelist Marie Cosnay points towards new eco-critical and creative directions in Ovidian scholarship and reception. Students and scholars of French Studies, Classics, Comparative Literature and Translation Studies will find much to interest them in this diverse collection of essays.

This book is devoted to medieval Iberian women, readers and writers. Focusing on the stories and texts women heard, visually experienced or read, and the stories that they rewrote, the work explores women’s experiences and cultural practices and their efforts to make sense of their place within their familial networks and communities. The study is based on two methodological and interpretive threads: a new paradigm to represent premodern reading and, a study of women’s writing, or, more precisely, women’s textualities, as a process of creating words but also acts, social practices, emotions and, ultimately, affectus, understood here as the embodiment of the ability to affect and be affected.