Ovid S Heroides And The Augustan Principate

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.

"What would Greek and Roman myth look like if women had written the stories?" asks Tara Welch in her illuminating Introduction to this volume. Stanley Lombardo and Melina McClure’s faithful translation of Ovid’s famous letters, purportedly written by heroines of classical antiquity to their absent lovers, offers an inkling of one intriguing possibility.

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 publication provides a detailed commentary on the first book of Ovid's calendar poem Fasti and tackles head-on the problems and dynamics of the post-exilic reworking of the text. It is the most extensive analysis yet on any single book of the poem.

Law and Love in Ovid challenges the view that legal language in poetry is a sign of frivolity and argues that it signals a radical return to the roots of law's creation.

Brings the Amores into the forefront of scholarly discussion

Ovid was one of the greatest writers of classical antiquity, and arguably the single most influential ancient poet for post-classical literature and culture. In this Cambridge Companion, chapters by leading authorities from Europe and North America discuss the backgrounds and contexts for Ovid, the individual works, and his influence on later literature and art. Coverage of essential information is combined with exciting critical approaches. This Companion is designed both as an accessible handbook for the general reader who wishes to learn about Ovid, and as a series of stimulating essays for students of Latin poetry and of the classical tradition.