Jessica Westerhold

Abstract:Sulpicia, a young woman connected to an important literary circle through her uncle, Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, may be the only extant female poet of the Augustan period. If so, it is likely that Ovid had privileged knowledge of a Roman woman’s poetic voice, as scholars have noted similarities between Ovid’s poetry and Sulpicia’s. We may see further correspondences between the Ovidian Byblis’s epistle and Sulpicia, which, I will argue, reflect the ‘sound’ of female-authored poetry, at least as a male poet hears and reproduces it. Whether Ovid is looking toward Sulpicia for a model of feminine Latinity, whether the pseudonymous Sulpicia is looking toward Ovid’s Byblis, or whether Ovid has written them both, Byblis’s epistolary verse constructs a believable female poetic voice. When compared to Sulpicia’s corpus, the subtle differences suggest multiple ways in which the writing voice of a woman may have expressed a sexual desire that is in tension with a self-identified femininity governed by pudicitia (sexual virtue), the late Republican and Augustan definition of a good Roman maiden and woman. I will argue that differences reveal cultural assumptions that construct the male ventriloquized Byblis and offer further evidence in support of Sulpicia’s identification as a genuine female writer.

Tragic Desire: Phaedra and Her Heirs in Ovid by Jessica A. Westerhold A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Department of Classics, University of Toronto © Copyright by Jessica A. Westerhold 2011 Page 2. ii ...

As the first poem of the last book of Ovid's Amores, 3.1 parallels the programmatic recusatio of the first two books, which present the traditional opposition of elegy to epic. In Amores 3.1, the personified Elegy and Tragedy compete for Ovid's poetic attention, and scholars have accordingly scrutinized the generic tension between elegy and tragedy in this poem. My study, by contrast, focusses on the import of the metapoetic locus in which Ovid sets his contest between the two genres, by considering the linguistic and allusive play in the opening lines. Ovid exploits the metaphor of literary tradition as an ancient and sacred forest to transform an author's choice of poetic genre into a walk in the woods. Moreover, allusions to Virgil's Aeneid 6.179 and Ennius' Annales 175 (Sk.) in the first line guide Ovid's audience to expect the more traditional opposition of elegy and epic. The less conventional contest between the genres of elegy and tragedy soon overtur...

Sulpicia, a young woman connected to an important literary circle through her uncle, Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, may be the only extant female poet of the Augustan period. If so, it is likely that Ovid had privileged knowledge of a Roman woman’s poetic voice, as scholars have noted similarities between Ovid’s poetry and Sulpicia’s. We may see further correspondences between the Ovidian Byblis’s epistle and Sulpicia, which, I will argue, reflect the ‘sound’ of female-authored poetry, at least as a male poet hears and reproduces it. Whether Ovid is looking toward Sulpicia for a model of feminine Latinity, whether the pseudonymous Sulpicia is looking toward Ovid’s Byblis, or whether Ovid has written them both, Byblis’s epistolary verse constructs a believable female poetic voice. When compared to Sulpicia’s corpus, the subtle differences suggest multiple ways in which the writing voice of a woman may have expressed a sexual desire that is in tension with a self-identified femininity governed by pudicitia (sexual virtue), the late Republican and Augustan definition of a good Roman maiden and woman. I will argue that differences reveal cultural assumptions that construct the male ventriloquized Byblis and offer further evidence in support of Sulpicia’s identification as a genuine female writer.

This article explores the anxieties over poetic authority and epic memory articulated in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 13.399–575. Ovid closely follows the story of Hecuba after the fall of Troy as it was told in Euripides’ Hecuba. Although his source model is primarily tragic, Ovid’s version dramatizes the function of epic composition, the creation of epic fama. While Achilles and Polyxena struggle to control their mythological memory in Ovid’s epic, Ovid plays with generic expectations. As is fitting for Ovid’s epic of “changing forms,” Hecuba’s epic and tragic traditions are transformed into a uniquely Ovidian reinterpretation of the sack of Troy.