“(In)Human, All Too (In)Human”: Ovid’s Tereus and the Vulnerable Body
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Miriam Kamil
Miriam Kamil is Visiting Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Her research examines Ovidian poetics through the lenses of intertextuality, gender and sexuality, and theories of emotion. Recent publications include an article applying trauma theory to Ovid’s tales of rape inTAPA . She is also concerned with classical reception, with a forthcoming book chapter on references to Sappho in the writing of Virginia Woolf. Her bookQueer and Deviant Classics , an exploration of uses of antiquity in socially progressive movements of the twentieth century, is under contract with University of California Press.Simona Martorana is Lecturer in Classics at the Australian National University. Her main research focus on Latin verse combines philological rigour in attention to the detail of the texts with contemporary theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches to antiquity (gender; posthumanism; environmental and medical humanities; legal theory). Her publications include a monograph on Ovid’s Heroides (Seeking the Mothers in Ovid’s Heroides , Cornell UP, 2024), a critical edition of a collection of Medieval fables (Il Romulus della Recensio Gallicana , Sismel, 2024), as well as a number of articles and book chapters focusing mainly on Latin authors from the late-republican and early imperial age.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the Ovidian depiction of the myth of Tereus. Building on anthropological and feminist approaches to incest, rape, and anthropophagy, the authors use Charles Segal’s reading of Tereus as a “metamorphic body” to investigate the story’s dynamics of perpetual change that culminate in the dissolution of corporeal boundaries. This re-examination of Tereus’ narrative demonstrates that Tereus’ moral “inhumanity” is revealed poetically by a progressive splintering of his identity, correlated to the instability of his body and gender.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the Ovidian depiction of the myth of Tereus. Building on anthropological and feminist approaches to incest, rape, and anthropophagy, the authors use Charles Segal’s reading of Tereus as a “metamorphic body” to investigate the story’s dynamics of perpetual change that culminate in the dissolution of corporeal boundaries. This re-examination of Tereus’ narrative demonstrates that Tereus’ moral “inhumanity” is revealed poetically by a progressive splintering of his identity, correlated to the instability of his body and gender.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword VII
- Contents IX
- Introduction 1
- (Re)assembling the Tereus Myth: Vase Painting, Memory, and the Senses 15
- Lamenting about the Wrong Crime: Homer, Sophocles and Demonising the Other 41
- Hunting Tereus: Rubens, Shakespeare, Sophocles 61
- Passion, Knowledge and Truth: Second Thoughts on Sophocles’ Tereus 77
- ζηλοτυπ[ίᾳ ......] οἰστρηθεισ̃ α: Domestic Violence and Revenge in Sophocles’ Tereus 95
- Tereus’ Illicit Penetration(s): A New Reading of Fragment 581 R 115
- The Voice of the Shuttle: The Tereus Myth in Aristophanes’ Birds 131
- Tereus in the Fifth and Fourth Century: From Paratragedy to Mythic Burlesque 153
- The Tereus Myth in Roman Republican Drama 179
- “(In)Human, All Too (In)Human”: Ovid’s Tereus and the Vulnerable Body 191
- Postface 205
- Methodological Appendix: The Orchid and the Wasp — Reading Fragments with Assemblage Theory 223
- List of Contributors 241
- General Index
- Index of Sources
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword VII
- Contents IX
- Introduction 1
- (Re)assembling the Tereus Myth: Vase Painting, Memory, and the Senses 15
- Lamenting about the Wrong Crime: Homer, Sophocles and Demonising the Other 41
- Hunting Tereus: Rubens, Shakespeare, Sophocles 61
- Passion, Knowledge and Truth: Second Thoughts on Sophocles’ Tereus 77
- ζηλοτυπ[ίᾳ ......] οἰστρηθεισ̃ α: Domestic Violence and Revenge in Sophocles’ Tereus 95
- Tereus’ Illicit Penetration(s): A New Reading of Fragment 581 R 115
- The Voice of the Shuttle: The Tereus Myth in Aristophanes’ Birds 131
- Tereus in the Fifth and Fourth Century: From Paratragedy to Mythic Burlesque 153
- The Tereus Myth in Roman Republican Drama 179
- “(In)Human, All Too (In)Human”: Ovid’s Tereus and the Vulnerable Body 191
- Postface 205
- Methodological Appendix: The Orchid and the Wasp — Reading Fragments with Assemblage Theory 223
- List of Contributors 241
- General Index
- Index of Sources
