Description
Book SynopsisOvid''s Tragic Heroines expands our understanding of Ovid''s incorporation of Greek generic codes and the tragic heroines, Phaedra and Medea, while offering a new perspective on the Roman poet''s persistent interest in these two characters and their paradigms. Ovid presents these two Attic tragic heroines as symbols of different passions that are defined by the specific combination of their gender and generic provenance. Their failure to be understood and their subsequent punishment are constructed as the result of their female nature, and are generically marked as tragic. Ovid''s masculine poetic voice, by contrast, is given free rein to oscillate and play with poetic possibilities.
Jessica A. Westerhold focuses on select passages from the poems Ars Amatoria, Heroides, and Metamorphoses. Building on existing scholarship, she analyzes the dynamic nature of generic categories and codes in Ovid''s poetry, especially the interplay of ele
