Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters
Fiona Cox
Abstract
This monograph explores an understudied aspect of classical reception—the extraordinary response to Ovid on the part of contemporary women writers. To date, work on classical reception has focused predominantly upon the second-wave feminism preoccupations of recovering the silenced female voices and establishing a woman’s perspective within canonical works. This monograph extends this work by examining the intersections between Ovid’s imaginative universe and the political and aesthetic agenda of third-wave feminism. Ovid enters a new phase of feminism which emphasizes the imperatives of socia ... More
This monograph explores an understudied aspect of classical reception—the extraordinary response to Ovid on the part of contemporary women writers. To date, work on classical reception has focused predominantly upon the second-wave feminism preoccupations of recovering the silenced female voices and establishing a woman’s perspective within canonical works. This monograph extends this work by examining the intersections between Ovid’s imaginative universe and the political and aesthetic agenda of third-wave feminism. Ovid enters a new phase of feminism which emphasizes the imperatives of social responsibility and democratization of learning, while also exploring the fluidity of gender boundaries and the ways in which new virtual universes have modified our attitudes to both sexuality and fame. Authors selected for particular case studies include A. S. Byatt, Ali Smith, Marina Warner, Yoko Tawada, Alice Oswald, Saviana Stanescu, Mary Zimmerman, Jo Shapcott, Marie Darrieussecq, Josephine Balmer, Averill Curdy, Clare Pollard, Michèle Roberts, and Jane Alison. Through an analysis of the novels, memoirs, short stories, poems, plays, and translations/adaptations of these writers, Cox opens up the field of classical reception to third-wave feminism, while also casting new light upon the extraordinary plasticity of Ovid’s writing and the acuity of his psychological imagination.
Keywords:
Ovid, classical reception, monstrosity, third-wave feminism, internet social responsibility, gender, women’s writing
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198779889 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2018 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198779889.001.0001 |
