Readers and Writers in Ovid's Heroides : Transgressions of Genre and Gender

## Abstract This book presents a study which reconstructs the experiences of the abandoned heroines of the Heroides, which have been largely ignored by past criticism. The book 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. The book 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 a study of the intricate and heated negotiations behind the interpretative act. "The almost complete absence of female authors from the classical canon has been a substantial problem for feminist critiques of the Classics. Ovid's Heroides offer an exceptional insight into the female voice as dramatized by this particularly complex and subtle male author. Dr. Spentzou seeks ways to isolate, characterize, and ultimately release the female voice and experience of the writing h̀eroine' in Ovid's first-person female narratives. This is the first full-length study to reconstruct the experiences of the abandoned heroines, which have been largely ignored by past criticism. It is a book determined to valorize and celebrate gendered experience and expression as they emerge through the intricate intertextuality of the collection and it offers an extensive exploration of the complexities of interpretation and literary voice(s). Dr. Spentzou works at the intersection of ancient criticism and modern literary theories as images of and reflections on gender, genre, and writing - which span from Plato, and the Greek tragedians to Cixous, Kristeva, and modern epistolary theorists - meet, interpret, and are reinterpreted in the heroines' monologues. The book develops and also challenges one of the most significant explicative tools of Classical poetry in recent times, intertextuality, as it attempts to instil ideology into self-reflexive experimentation and to establish gendered thinking as a drive that pervades a series of political, formalist, generic, reader-oriented and other discourses. By recovering a strong and elaborate psychology the book works with and beyond postmodern textuality, thus making itself a very informative example of poetry criticism at the wake of recent textual sovereignty in the field of literary studies."--Jacket 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.

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. Bringing together a broad range of ancient and modern critical thought, Dr. Spentzou isolates the voices of landmark female figures of the classical myth, releasing them from Ovid's male text.

This book-length study reconstructs 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