Abstract:Theocritus's Adoniazusae (Idyll 15) has long been recognized as one of his most historically pertinent Idylls, but the complex social dynamics of the narrative frame warrant further investigation. Building on earlier feminist readings of the poem, this study pays careful attention to the characters' comments about ethnicity and gender in order to explore the intersection of these two categories. The concept of intersectionality arose as a means to critique judicial reasoning that relies on solitary, exclusive categorical identities. Crenshaw's foundational studies (1989, 1991) show that judicial decisions often handle race and gender in separation and isolation, and that this "single-axis" approach to identifying categories made it effectively impossible to contemplate the experience of women of color. By applying this method to Idyll 15, we can escape the limitations of the poem's Hellenocentric perspective and consider the poem in terms of the Egyptian gender norms with which it builds an implicit contrast. An intersectional reading of the poem acknowledges that such categories as Greek and Egyptian, women and man, cannot be treated in isolation; rather, they are co-determinative. The seeds of this way of thinking existed already in antiquity in Herodotus's famous ethnography of Egypt (Hist. 2.35–36), which employs an oppositional matrix to relate Egyptian and Hellenic gender norms. This passage remained a touchstone for ancient writers, and was likely familiar to Theocritus and his audience. Despite its clear ethnocentric limitations, Herodotus's account helps reveal the constitutive oppositions of gender and ethnicity that underlie Theocritus's poem. By contrasting the rigid gender roles of the Greek protagonists with the more adaptable gender roles of the native Egyptians, we can reveal a subtle critique of Greek gender itself.
{"title":"An Intersectional Approach to Theocritus, Idyll 15","authors":"Matthew Chaldekas","doi":"10.1353/hel.2022.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2022.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Theocritus's Adoniazusae (Idyll 15) has long been recognized as one of his most historically pertinent Idylls, but the complex social dynamics of the narrative frame warrant further investigation. Building on earlier feminist readings of the poem, this study pays careful attention to the characters' comments about ethnicity and gender in order to explore the intersection of these two categories. The concept of intersectionality arose as a means to critique judicial reasoning that relies on solitary, exclusive categorical identities. Crenshaw's foundational studies (1989, 1991) show that judicial decisions often handle race and gender in separation and isolation, and that this \"single-axis\" approach to identifying categories made it effectively impossible to contemplate the experience of women of color. By applying this method to Idyll 15, we can escape the limitations of the poem's Hellenocentric perspective and consider the poem in terms of the Egyptian gender norms with which it builds an implicit contrast. An intersectional reading of the poem acknowledges that such categories as Greek and Egyptian, women and man, cannot be treated in isolation; rather, they are co-determinative. The seeds of this way of thinking existed already in antiquity in Herodotus's famous ethnography of Egypt (Hist. 2.35–36), which employs an oppositional matrix to relate Egyptian and Hellenic gender norms. This passage remained a touchstone for ancient writers, and was likely familiar to Theocritus and his audience. Despite its clear ethnocentric limitations, Herodotus's account helps reveal the constitutive oppositions of gender and ethnicity that underlie Theocritus's poem. By contrasting the rigid gender roles of the Greek protagonists with the more adaptable gender roles of the native Egyptians, we can reveal a subtle critique of Greek gender itself.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"49 1","pages":"1 - 24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47928909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article surveys the discussion around teaching and reading Ovid's upsetting stories of sexual violence, especially in the context of the #MeToo era, and suggests that such stories offer modern readers the opportunity to investigate the power dynamics that allow such acts to happen at all. The case study for this approach is the myth of Philomela, Tereus, and Procne in Metamorphoses 6, and by applying a narratological lens to the passage, we can see how characters like Philomela are empowered through speech and communication, while aggressors like Tereus, deprived of direct speech, are stripped of agency by the narrator.
{"title":"Ovid in the #MeToo Era","authors":"Daniel Libatique","doi":"10.1353/hel.2021.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2021.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article surveys the discussion around teaching and reading Ovid's upsetting stories of sexual violence, especially in the context of the #MeToo era, and suggests that such stories offer modern readers the opportunity to investigate the power dynamics that allow such acts to happen at all. The case study for this approach is the myth of Philomela, Tereus, and Procne in Metamorphoses 6, and by applying a narratological lens to the passage, we can see how characters like Philomela are empowered through speech and communication, while aggressors like Tereus, deprived of direct speech, are stripped of agency by the narrator.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"48 1","pages":"57 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47770877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In this paper I explore the contribution of the medieval French writer Christine de Pizan (1365–c. 1431) to Ovidian reception studies in her early illustrated work, Epistle of Othéa (1399–1400). Along with the Ovide Moralisé, the Othéa stands at the start of a rich visual tradition of Ovidian illustration. Christine's written and pictorial response to the narrative of Diana and Actaeon demonstrates how Ovidian myth provided her with a powerful aesthetic and cultural discourse that evaded the phallocentric, exclusive domain of the male writer and validated the co-emergence of genders and identities.
摘要:本文探讨了中世纪法国作家克里斯汀·德·皮桑(Christine de Pizan, 1365-c)的贡献。1431)到奥维德的接受研究,在她早期的插图作品,奥斯海姆的书信(1399-1400)。和奥维德的道德画像一样,奥维德的《奥斯海姆》是奥维德插画丰富的视觉传统的开端。克里斯汀对黛安娜和阿克托翁的叙述的书面和图像回应表明奥维德神话如何为她提供了强大的美学和文化话语,避开了男性作家的生殖器中心,专属领域,并证实了性别和身份的共同出现。
{"title":"Actaeon in the Wilderness: Ovid and Christine de Pizan","authors":"C. Newlands","doi":"10.1353/hel.2021.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2021.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this paper I explore the contribution of the medieval French writer Christine de Pizan (1365–c. 1431) to Ovidian reception studies in her early illustrated work, Epistle of Othéa (1399–1400). Along with the Ovide Moralisé, the Othéa stands at the start of a rich visual tradition of Ovidian illustration. Christine's written and pictorial response to the narrative of Diana and Actaeon demonstrates how Ovidian myth provided her with a powerful aesthetic and cultural discourse that evaded the phallocentric, exclusive domain of the male writer and validated the co-emergence of genders and identities.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"48 1","pages":"21 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47440914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This paper surveys recent trends in Ovidian studies (such as cross-cultural studies, the 'spatial turn,' reception, and gender studies), and reviews some approaches that have continued to be important, such as genre, intertextuality, and authority.
{"title":"New Directions in Ovidian Scholarship","authors":"K. Myers","doi":"10.1353/hel.2021.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2021.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper surveys recent trends in Ovidian studies (such as cross-cultural studies, the 'spatial turn,' reception, and gender studies), and reviews some approaches that have continued to be important, such as genre, intertextuality, and authority.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"48 1","pages":"20 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48178722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This study explores three myths from Ovid's Metamorphoses, to which the poet returned in his exile poetry, and their reception in two late twentieth-century European novels. In his final verse collections, Ovid evinces great concern for the enduring fame of the Metamorphoses, and his reinterpretation of metamorphic myth in the exile poetry underlines the potential for their allegorical interpretation. This article charts some of these metamorphic themes, and their allegorical import, in two central European novels of the late twentieth century, which explore Ovid's exile from a postmodern perspective: Christoph Ransmayr's Die letzte Welt (1988) and Josef Škvorecký's Nevysvětlitelný příběh aneb Vyprávění Questa Firma Sicula (1998).
{"title":"Ovid in and after Exile","authors":"Alison Keith","doi":"10.1353/hel.2021.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2021.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This study explores three myths from Ovid's Metamorphoses, to which the poet returned in his exile poetry, and their reception in two late twentieth-century European novels. In his final verse collections, Ovid evinces great concern for the enduring fame of the Metamorphoses, and his reinterpretation of metamorphic myth in the exile poetry underlines the potential for their allegorical interpretation. This article charts some of these metamorphic themes, and their allegorical import, in two central European novels of the late twentieth century, which explore Ovid's exile from a postmodern perspective: Christoph Ransmayr's Die letzte Welt (1988) and Josef Škvorecký's Nevysvětlitelný příběh aneb Vyprávění Questa Firma Sicula (1998).","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"48 1","pages":"41 - 56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43707509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:New-materialistic studies of early Greek poetry have focused on the Homeric epics and on their intersections with the concepts of "entanglement" or the "assemblage," both of which acknowledge the interwovenness of humans and objects. This paper focuses on martial elegy, especially the compositions of Tyrtaeus and Archilochus, and shows that while some passages coincide with new-materialistic descriptions of assemblages, such poems place greater emphasis on the sorts of concepts explored by object-oriented ontologists: the agency of objects, their independence from human control, and human ignorance of object-object interactions.
{"title":"Other Materialisms: Human and Nonhuman in Martial Elegy","authors":"William Brockliss","doi":"10.1353/hel.2020.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2020.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:New-materialistic studies of early Greek poetry have focused on the Homeric epics and on their intersections with the concepts of \"entanglement\" or the \"assemblage,\" both of which acknowledge the interwovenness of humans and objects. This paper focuses on martial elegy, especially the compositions of Tyrtaeus and Archilochus, and shows that while some passages coincide with new-materialistic descriptions of assemblages, such poems place greater emphasis on the sorts of concepts explored by object-oriented ontologists: the agency of objects, their independence from human control, and human ignorance of object-object interactions.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"47 1","pages":"133 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/hel.2020.0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49661913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The topic of female pleasure is frequently suppressed in Ovid's Ars amatoria. Yet because pleasure is an unavoidable subject for a teacher who professes techniques of love, the moments in which this topic is broached are marked by a rupture in the teacher's logic or by an overt redirection of the course of his teaching, an overt covering up of female desire and pleasure at the very moment it appears. Drawing on the works of French feminist theorists Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, as well as Paul B. Preciado's more recent theorization of technologies of female pleasure, this article analyzes the problems that female pleasure poses for a patriarchal discourse on love. It argues that Ovid's praeceptor gestures at female pleasure in his teachings, only to evade or repress it. These moments of rupture—when female pleasure materializes only to be defeated—provoke the reader to consider the contradictions inherent in patriarchal ideologies of gender and sexuality, thereby posing a provocative challenge to the dominant social and political order, represented most saliently by Augustus and his moral legislation.
{"title":"Tectius illa cupit: Female Pleasure in Ovid's Ars amatoria","authors":"E. Weiberg","doi":"10.1353/hel.2020.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2020.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The topic of female pleasure is frequently suppressed in Ovid's Ars amatoria. Yet because pleasure is an unavoidable subject for a teacher who professes techniques of love, the moments in which this topic is broached are marked by a rupture in the teacher's logic or by an overt redirection of the course of his teaching, an overt covering up of female desire and pleasure at the very moment it appears. Drawing on the works of French feminist theorists Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, as well as Paul B. Preciado's more recent theorization of technologies of female pleasure, this article analyzes the problems that female pleasure poses for a patriarchal discourse on love. It argues that Ovid's praeceptor gestures at female pleasure in his teachings, only to evade or repress it. These moments of rupture—when female pleasure materializes only to be defeated—provoke the reader to consider the contradictions inherent in patriarchal ideologies of gender and sexuality, thereby posing a provocative challenge to the dominant social and political order, represented most saliently by Augustus and his moral legislation.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"47 1","pages":"161 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/hel.2020.0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48531963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article explores Ovid's Heroides 15 (the Epistula Sapphus) through a post-human feminist approach, engaging with the most recent scholarly debate on (Ovid's) Sappho's polysemous poetic language, polyphonic narrative, and gender fluidity. Drawing from recently published works that explore the intersections between posthumanism and antiquity, I show that Her. 15 is resituated within the 'posthuman turn' and accordingly reinterpreted as an expression of Ovid's and Sappho's poetic identity. Sappho's self-identification with her polymorphic poetry, assimilation into the natural world, and transitional sexual identity serve to both downplay and destabilize her role as a poetic subject, while at the same time enhancing her (and Ovid's) poetic creation. The idea of poetry as a self-shaping force is articulated by the agency that certain poetic objects (e.g., the letter, the poem, the verses), as well as other animate or inanimate natural elements (e.g., the branches and birds), hold within the epistle. Ovid has Sappho forego her poetic agency and question her literary skills; however, her poetic identity is also reaffirmed and strengthened precisely by the composition of her epistle. The displacement of the 'human' poet thus serves to enhance the centrality of the artistic, literary work. This dialectic between the limits of Sappho as a poet and the boundlessness of her poetry persists until—and reaches its peak at—the end of Her. 15, where Sappho anticipates her self-murder. Her (foretold) leap in the waters of the Leucadian Sea (217–220) can be interpreted both as a form of self-annihilation and as a means of stressing the permanence and timelessness of her own and Ovid's poetic talents.
{"title":"(Re)writing Sappho: Navigating Sappho's (Posthuman) Poetic Identity in Ovid, Heroides 15","authors":"S. Martorana","doi":"10.1353/hel.2020.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2020.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores Ovid's Heroides 15 (the Epistula Sapphus) through a post-human feminist approach, engaging with the most recent scholarly debate on (Ovid's) Sappho's polysemous poetic language, polyphonic narrative, and gender fluidity. Drawing from recently published works that explore the intersections between posthumanism and antiquity, I show that Her. 15 is resituated within the 'posthuman turn' and accordingly reinterpreted as an expression of Ovid's and Sappho's poetic identity. Sappho's self-identification with her polymorphic poetry, assimilation into the natural world, and transitional sexual identity serve to both downplay and destabilize her role as a poetic subject, while at the same time enhancing her (and Ovid's) poetic creation. The idea of poetry as a self-shaping force is articulated by the agency that certain poetic objects (e.g., the letter, the poem, the verses), as well as other animate or inanimate natural elements (e.g., the branches and birds), hold within the epistle. Ovid has Sappho forego her poetic agency and question her literary skills; however, her poetic identity is also reaffirmed and strengthened precisely by the composition of her epistle. The displacement of the 'human' poet thus serves to enhance the centrality of the artistic, literary work. This dialectic between the limits of Sappho as a poet and the boundlessness of her poetry persists until—and reaches its peak at—the end of Her. 15, where Sappho anticipates her self-murder. Her (foretold) leap in the waters of the Leucadian Sea (217–220) can be interpreted both as a form of self-annihilation and as a means of stressing the permanence and timelessness of her own and Ovid's poetic talents.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"47 1","pages":"135 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/hel.2020.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44006631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article begins by analyzing the way in which reach and touch mark the achievement of Odysseus’s reunions and suggests a new way of conceptualizing Homeric desire and the protagonist’s need for fulfillment within a narrative through haptic action. It then turns to the ways in which the telos of reach, namely, touch, manifests in a gendered dynamic that pits the masculine grasp against the feminine caress of fingertips. It concludes by outlining the ways in which the very progression of the Homeric narrative, in both the Odyssey and Iliad, is conceptualized in terms of a reaching body.
{"title":"Reach and Reunion in the Odyssey: An Enactive Narratology","authors":"Alexander S. W. Forte","doi":"10.1353/hel.2020.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2020.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article begins by analyzing the way in which reach and touch mark the achievement of Odysseus’s reunions and suggests a new way of conceptualizing Homeric desire and the protagonist’s need for fulfillment within a narrative through haptic action. It then turns to the ways in which the telos of reach, namely, touch, manifests in a gendered dynamic that pits the masculine grasp against the feminine caress of fingertips. It concludes by outlining the ways in which the very progression of the Homeric narrative, in both the Odyssey and Iliad, is conceptualized in terms of a reaching body.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"47 1","pages":"1 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/hel.2020.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44605986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This paper examines the many contradictions in Tibullus 1.1 that are subsequently repeated throughout his poetry, and have been repeatedly inscrutable for those working on the poems. Tibullus will drift between and amongst different locations, speakers, addressees, and viewpoints in a single poem, and on occasion within the space of a few lines. I will introduce Kierkegaard’s concept of despair into a reading of the poems in order to discover what the text is doing in these passages. In its indecision, the poetry replays the stages of Kierkegaard’s despair for us, revealing a text fraught with self-doubt.
{"title":"The Sickness unto Elegy: Kierkegaard’s Despair in Tibullus","authors":"Nick Ollivère","doi":"10.1353/hel.2020.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2020.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper examines the many contradictions in Tibullus 1.1 that are subsequently repeated throughout his poetry, and have been repeatedly inscrutable for those working on the poems. Tibullus will drift between and amongst different locations, speakers, addressees, and viewpoints in a single poem, and on occasion within the space of a few lines. I will introduce Kierkegaard’s concept of despair into a reading of the poems in order to discover what the text is doing in these passages. In its indecision, the poetry replays the stages of Kierkegaard’s despair for us, revealing a text fraught with self-doubt.","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"47 1","pages":"71 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/hel.2020.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48897341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}