Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Before the Name: Ovid's Deformulated Lesbianism

Before the Name: Ovid's Deformulated Lesbianism 1 All translations follow Allen Mandelbaum, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, whose page numbers I cite since his lines are unnumbered. The corresponding Latin quotations are from William S. Anderson, ed., P. Ovidii Nasonis: Metamorphoses. COMPARATIVE LITERATURE /206 Bernadette Brooten explains, for example, that in order to rescue Sappho’s poetry from her renowned homoeroticism, writers throughout history have displaced her desire and affection for women either onto a depraved prostitute of the same name or into a heteronormative conversion of sorts, in which she fell in love with a ferryman named Phaon, because of whom she then committed suicide. In either account, Sappho’s lesbianism is made safely to disappear (Love Between Women 38).2 Judith Hallett similarly demonstrates that elite Latin writers in Rome, with the exception of one satiric example, obscured the existence of contemporary female homoeroticism by masculinizing, Hellenizing, and anachronizing its representation: “female homoeroticism was an undifferentiated, unassimilated conglomeration of alien and unnatural Greek behaviors, which did not really take place in their own milieu or—if it did occur—did so in a completely unrealistic way” (223). And despite many theoretical and institutional strides that have helped to uncloset the alterity of classical erotics, Ann Pellegrini believes that http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Before the Name: Ovid's Deformulated Lesbianism

Comparative Literature , Volume 58 (3) – Jan 1, 2006

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/before-the-name-ovid-s-deformulated-lesbianism-0u0XL74zBU

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2006 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-58-3-205
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

1 All translations follow Allen Mandelbaum, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, whose page numbers I cite since his lines are unnumbered. The corresponding Latin quotations are from William S. Anderson, ed., P. Ovidii Nasonis: Metamorphoses. COMPARATIVE LITERATURE /206 Bernadette Brooten explains, for example, that in order to rescue Sappho’s poetry from her renowned homoeroticism, writers throughout history have displaced her desire and affection for women either onto a depraved prostitute of the same name or into a heteronormative conversion of sorts, in which she fell in love with a ferryman named Phaon, because of whom she then committed suicide. In either account, Sappho’s lesbianism is made safely to disappear (Love Between Women 38).2 Judith Hallett similarly demonstrates that elite Latin writers in Rome, with the exception of one satiric example, obscured the existence of contemporary female homoeroticism by masculinizing, Hellenizing, and anachronizing its representation: “female homoeroticism was an undifferentiated, unassimilated conglomeration of alien and unnatural Greek behaviors, which did not really take place in their own milieu or—if it did occur—did so in a completely unrealistic way” (223). And despite many theoretical and institutional strides that have helped to uncloset the alterity of classical erotics, Ann Pellegrini believes that

Journal

Comparative LiteratureDuke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2006

There are no references for this article.