OVIDIAN

POETRY: Dr Lucy Pearson

SEX AND Lucy.pearson@ncl.ac.uk

POWER
LECTURE OUTLINE

• Ovidian Sexual Politics

• Diana and Actaeon, Ceres and Proserpina
• Ovid as a poet of love and desire
• Rereading Ovid's seductions
• Ipthis and Ianthe
• Ali Smith - Girl Meets Boy
OVIDIAN
SEXUAL
POLITICS
DIANA AND
ACTAEON
‘Now tell how you have seen me nude, if you
Can tell’
(Stephanie McCarter translation of
Metamorphoses)
PROSPERPINA
Almost at once, Dis sees her, wants her, steals her.

(Stephanie McCarter translation of Metamorphoses)

 OVID AS A POET OF LOVE
AND DESIRE

•Heroides ‘Heroines’
•Amores ‘Loves’
•Ars Amatoria ‘The Arts of Love’
•Remedia Amoris ‘Cures for Love’
•Metamorphoses ‘Transformations’

Image: Penelope writing to Odysseus, from

a C16th French version of Heroides
 FEMALE EXPERIENCE OF
LOVE AND DESIRE:
HEROIDES
Penelope’s lament:
O I wish, at that time when he sought Sparta with his fleet,
Paris, the adulterer, had been whelmed beneath angry seas!
I would not have lain here, cold in an empty bed,
nor be left behind, to complain, at suffering long days,
nor my hand, bereft, exhaust me, working all night long
to cause deception, with my doubtful web.
When have I not feared dangers worse than all realities?
Love is a thing full of anxious fears.
- A.S. Kline translation
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Heroides1-7.php
Image: Penelope writing to Odysseus, from
a C16th French version of Heroides
TRANSFORM
ATIVE LOVE
Metamorphoses
 A.S. Kline translation
(2000)
Stephanie McCarter
translation (2023)
SEDUCTION…?
For further discussion of
Ovid’s treatment of sexual
coercion see
•Guide to the classics: Ovi
d's Metamorphoses and re
ading rape (theconversati
on.com)
•How a Woman Becomes a
Lake | The New Yorker
•Rewriting Roman Myths
From the Perspective of T
heir Victims | The Nation
 Story of Philomel, Procne and
Tereus – McCarter titles this
‘Tereus rapes Philomela’
• A story about abuse of power
• A story about sisterly bonds and
familial duties
•A story about stories – voiceless
Philomel is able to weave her
story and thus communicate what
has happened to her.
• A story about revenge – Philomel
and Procne punish Tereus by
killing his son
PHILOMEL: SEX, • A story in which all three
protagonists are transformed at the
POWER AND end – a punishment or an escape?

SISTERHOOD
 RECENT For further discussion of Ovid’s treatment of sexual
coercion see

PERSPECT •Guide to the classics: Ovid's Metamorphoses and read

ing rape (theconversation.com)
IVES ON •How a Woman Becomes a Lake | The New Yorker

OVID •Rewriting Roman Myths From the Perspective of The

ir Victims | The Nation
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
LOVE, DESIRE AND
SEXUALITY
• Who are the subjects of desire?
• Who are its objects?
• What scope do gods and humans have to act on and express their passion?
• What scope is there to find queer desire or non-normative gender identities in Ovid?
• How and where does sexuality intersect with power and violence? What does Ovid
have to say about consent?
SEXUAL
POLITICS:
FAMILY
‘Meanwhile, the panicked mother sought her
daughter
Through every land and sea.’
(Stephanie McCarter translation of Metamorphoses)
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
FAMILY
Ceres and Proserpina  What kinds of familial relationships does
Ovid represent?
 What social values can we infer from
those representations?
 How do they speak to us across time?
IPHIS AND
IANTHE
Family, sex and transformation
YOUR THOUGHTS
ON IPHIS AND
IANTHE
Thinking about the issues we have explored in
the lecture so far, what are the interesting /
important themes in Iphis and Ianthe?
 FAMILY
DYNAMICS:
PATRIARCH
AL POWER

Isis and Telethusa by Picart, 1732

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1139609
QUEER LOVE

“What will become of me, gripped as I am

by this queer longing for a novel kind
of lovemaking that no one understands?”
A QUEER LONGING:
STEPHANIE MCCARTER
“What will become of me, gripped as I am by Other Translations
this queer longing for a novel kind of
lovemaking that no one understands?” Stanley Lombardo: “strange and
monstrous love / that no one has heard of ”
The word I translate as “queer” and others as
“monstrous”* is prodigiosus, a word that Ovid Allen Mandelbaum: “love so strange / that
associates elsewhere with the metamorphic none has ever known its monstrous pangs”
marvels that populate the epic’s pages…. The
word suggests not moral revulsion but David Raeburn: “love that no one has
something totally unexpected and out of the heard of, a new kind of passion / a
ordinary . The contemporary register of “queer” monstrous desire!”
communicates, I hope, what Iphis sees as the
marvelous strangeness of her desire without Mary Innes: “a strange and unnatural kind of
saddling her with judgments about that desire love, which none has known before”
that she does not express. Such judgments
reflect later biases, not those of Ovid.’
STEPHANIE MCCARTER
REFLECTING ON TRANSLATING
THE TALE OF IPHIS AND IANTHE
‘The tale of Iphis and Ianthe… illuminates the links between present
and past even as it throws the stark differences into relief. In it, Ovid
poses timely questions about identity: Is Iphis, for example, a
transgender man? Or a queer woman? Does the final metamorphosis
confirm or undermine such labels? Although Ovid refreshingly
explores homoerotic desire, and acknowledges the reality that the
body or sex we are born with might not ultimately reflect who we are,
he also reveals how sexuality is itself an inconstant phenomenon
subject to change. In the end, Iphis’s conundrum and metamorphic
solution are not wholly of our time’. (565)
GIRL MEETS
BOY
From Ianthe to Anthea
GIRL MEETS BOY

A story about:
Families
Growing up
The threat of violence
Love
Superpowers
Transformation
… with a happy ending