Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Difference and the Poetic Imagination

Central to Ovid’s elegiac texts and his Metamorphoses is his pre-occupation with how desiring subjects interact and seduce each other. This major study, which shifts the focus in Ovidian criticism from intertextuality to intersubjectivity, explores the relationship between self and other, and in particular that between male and female worlds, which is at the heart of Ovid\'s vision of poetry and the imagination. A series of close readings, focusing on both the more celebrated and less studied parts of the corpus, moves beyond the more often-asked questions of Ovid, such as whether he is \'for\' or \'against\' women, in order to explore how gendered subjects converse, compete and co-create. It illustrates how the tale of Medusa, alongside that of Narcissus, reverberates throughout Ovid\'s oeuvre, becoming a fundamental myth for his poetics. This book offers a compelling, often troubling portrait of Ovid that will appeal to classicists and all those interested in gender and difference.

• Investigates the central theme of Ovid\'s poetry, namely his pre-occupation with the complex relationship between men and women • Offers close readings of Ovidian poetry, exploring both the celebrated and those lesser-known parts of the corpus • Presents a compelling new study of Ovid\'s works which moves away from the traditional approach of intertextuality to one of intersubjectivity

Introduction: Narcissus and Medusa: desiring subjects and the dialectics of Ovidian erotics; 1. Specular logicis: Medicamina; 2. Double vision: Ars Amatoria I, II, and III; 3. Seeing seers: Metamorphoses 10-11.84; 4. Co-creators: Heroides 15; 5. What goes around: Heroides 16-21; 6. Space between: Heroides 18-19; Conclusion.