The Lives of Ovid in Seventeenth-Century French Culture (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs)

Synopsis

Seventeenth-century France Saw One Of The Most Significant 'culture Wars' Europe Has Ever Known. Culminating In The Quarrel Of The Ancients And Moderns, This Was A Confrontational, Transitional Time For The Reception Of The Classics. Helena Taylor Explores Responses To The Life Of The Ancient Roman Poet, Ovid, Within This Charged Atmosphere. To Date, Criticism Has Focused On The Reception Of Ovid's Enormously Influential Work In This Period, But Little Attention Has Been Paid To Ovid's Lives And Their Uses. Through Close Analysis Of A Diverse Corpus, Which Includes Prefatory Lives, Novels, Plays, Biographical Dictionaries, Poetry, And Memoirs, This Study Investigates How The Figure Of Ovid Was Used To Debate Literary Taste And Modernity And To Reflect On Translation Practice. It Shows How The Narrative Of Ovid's Life Was Deployed To Explore The Politics And Poetics Of Exile Writing; And To Question The Relationship Between Fiction And History. Lives After Life -- Translating Ovid -- Ovid In Fiction -- The Exile Writes Back -- Ovid And Historiography. Helena Taylor. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 169-190) And Index.