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'A Simple Girl’?: Medea in Ovid Heroides 12
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 12:49 authored by Peter DavisFor Homer’s Circe the story of Argo’s voyage was already well known.2 Although we cannot be sure that the Odyssey’s first audience was aware of Medea’s role in Jason’s story, we do know that by the time that Ovid came to write Heroides, she had already appeared in numerous Greek and Latin texts, in epic and lyric poetry and on the tragic stage.3 Given her complex textual and dramatic history, it seems hardly likely that any Ovidian Medea could actually be ‘a simple girl’. And yet precisely this charge of ‘simplicity’ has been levelled against Heroides 12 and its fictive author.4 I propose to argue that the Medea of Heroides 12 is complex, not simple, and that her complexity derives from the fact that Ovid has positioned his elegiac heroine between past and future,5 guilt and innocence, epic and tragedy.
History
Publication title
Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman LiteratureVolume
Vol. 41Issue
1-2Pagination
33-49ISSN
0048-671XDepartment/School
School of HumanitiesPublisher
Aureal PublicationsPlace of publication
Po Box 49, Bendigo North Victoria, Australia, 3550Rights statement
© Aureal Publications 2012Repository Status
- Restricted