LAT 110 Ovid’s Heroides

LAT 110 – Ovid
Ovid’s Heroides

Prof. Kathleen N. Cruz

In this course, we’ll take a look at Ovid’s Heroides, a poetic collection which imagines what a variety of women from Greek and Latin literature and myth – from Penelope to Dido to Medea, among many others - have to say about the men who have deeply harmed them and derailed their lives. As we appreciate the poetic language and character of these works, we’ll also consider the different ways in which they have been interpreted. For example: should the Heroides be read as feminist texts wherein these women characters have a chance to respond to both those who have caused them pain as well as a literary tradition that may have done the same – or is this anachronistic? How do the Heroides fit among the rest of Ovid’s poetic works, and how certain are we that it was Ovid who wrote them (or all of them)? What can the Heroides tell us about the fluid relationship between different literary and mythic traditions as imagined by the specific Roman context of Ovid’s time?

To add further dimension to these questions, we’ll also consider the Heroides comparatively alongside excerpts from recent works narrating ancient mythic and literary women’s lives from their own point of view, including Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018) and Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne (2021).