OUP (2018) h/b 251pp £60.00 (ISBN 9780198779889)
What insight can the tree-transformations of the Metamorphoses give us into a Brexit-broken world? How does a staging of Ovid’s Orpheus myth help us process losses from terrorist attacks? How does Ovid’s Leto represent twenty-first century female experiences of exclusion, displacement, vulnerability and grief? The writers discussed in this study explore Ovid’s continuing relevance, from the promise of fluid identities in the Metamorphoses to the alienated self of his exile poetry.
This volume looks at Ovidianisms in the work of thirteen contemporary female writers of fiction, drama, poetry and autobiography, with a chapter covering each writer or pair of writers. C.’s focus on third-wave feminism defies easy categorisation as a feminist analysis; instead she offers a nuanced appreciation of the intersection of Ovid and today’s women writers.
The bibliography is a lively mix of fiction, classic feminist texts and Ovidian scholarship. There is a brief index which focuses more on contemporary individuals than classical characters, with an entry for Tom Cruise but none for Echo or Medusa.
C. draws particular attention to the ways in which Ovid is invoked to chart the monstrous bodily changes brought about by transformative illnesses. From the exile and dislocation of breast cancer (Ali Smith and Jo Shapcott) to the progressive petrification of a woman whose body becomes Pygmalion’s statue (A.S. Byatt), Ovid’s characters and Ovid’s banishment offer new ways of exploring physical change. The analysis of Yoko Tawada’s stories, for instance, shows us a modern-day Leda dealing with paralysis in her arms as they begin to turn into wings, and a Juno who sees her tumour as a child growing from a place it shouldn’t, like a baby born from Jupiter’s thigh, while she watches her son’s Narcissus-like fascination with the empty images of internet porn.
Unsurprisingly in a volume about female voices, the character of Echo is a dominant one, as the model for the female experience of anorexia nervosa (Ali Smith), the feeling of foreignness in a new culture (Yoko Tawada), the process of identity loss (Jane Alison) and the delighted thrill of a woman who answers back and twists words to her advantage, even as her body begins to waste away.
C. has charted a difficult course here, in trying to analyse what women bring to the interpretation of Ovid without suggesting that their writing is defined by, or solely focused on, their gender. Her solution is to tackle the challenge head-on. The subtitle of the volume, ‘Strange Monsters’, refers to the writing women who are the focus of the book, represented as at once both shockingly transgressive and a marvellous phenomenon. Through this, C. draws attention to the intrinsic otherness of the woman writer, whatever the subject of her writing.
This volume is not always an easy read: although C. offers translations of the Latin, French and German, she does demand some engagement with the texts in the original language. However, it is rewarding. Readers will find not just a list of literary encounters with Ovid, but also an incentive to investigate them more thoroughly, and to consider whether Ovid has really achieved the undying fame that he once sought.
Cora Beth Knowles