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Full Description
Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" explores Ovid's reconceptualization of the heroines' maternal experience. Rather than aligning them with the stereotypical roles of Roman women, motherhood enables the Ovidian heroines to challenge traditional norms with irreverent perspectives on gender categories and familial relationships. To confront these perspectives and overcome the dialectic between the (male) voice of the poet and the (female) voice of the heroines, Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" argues for a form of polyphonic "cooperation" between the two voices, thus providing new angles on ironical discourse and gender fluidity within the Heroides.
By reading the Heroides both through feminist theory and against Ovid's poetic production, Simona Martorana provides a novel approach to describe how motherhood enhances the heroines' agency, drawing on works of Kristeva, Irigaray, Butler, Mulvey, Cavarero, Braidotti, and Ettinger. The application of theory is flexible throughout Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" and tailored to the nuances of specific passages rather than being uniformly imposed on the ancient text.
Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" reveals how the irony, ambiguity, and polyphony intrinsic to Ovid's poetry are amplified by the heroines' poetic voices. Martorana breaks new ground by incorporating contemporary feminist theories within the analysis of the Heroides and provides an original comprehensive analysis of motherhood that encompasses other Ovidian works, Latin poetry, and classical literature more broadly.
Contents
Introduction: Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's Heroides
1. A Traditional matrona? Penelope between Motherhood and Heroism (Heroides 1)
2. Deianira, Hercules, and Hyllus (Heroides 9): to mētros onoma
3. Phaedra and the Reconceptualization of (Step)Motherhood (Heroides 4)
4. The Abject Bod: Canace in Heroides 11
5. Pregnancy, écriture feminine, and the Birth of the Text: Dido in Heroides 7
6. Motherhood, Metamorphosis, and Autopoiesis (Medea in Heroides 12)
7. The Self and the (M)Other:: Encounters, Borders, and Formation of Subjectivity (Heroides 6)
Epilogue: Maternal Environments
