Ovidian Bibliofictions and the Tudor Book: Metamorphosing Classical Heroines in Late Medieval and Renaissance England

by Lindsay Ann Reid, James Daybell, Adam Smyth

Overview

Focusing on the postclassical discourses that Ovid’s poetry stimulated, this study explores how Ovid’s English protégés - including Isabella Whitney, William Shakespeare and Michael Drayton - replicated and expanded upon the Roman poet’s distinctive and frequently remarked ‘bookishness’ in their own adaptations of his works. Reid analyzes how Ovidian-inspired mythologies and bibliographical aetiologies informed the sixteenth-century creation, reproduction, and representation of books, and provides alternative models for thinking about the dynamics of reception, adaptation, and imitatio.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472407931
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	08/28/2014
Series:	Material Readings in Early Modern Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Lindsay Ann Reid is Lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Table of Contents

'If all the yearth wer parchment scribable': Ovidian heroines in the Querelle des Femmes. 'Hir name, allas! Is publisshed so wyde': fama, gossip, and the dissemination of a pseudo-Ovidian heroine. 'Both false and also true': Ovidian heroines, epistolary elegy, and fictionalized materiality. 'Our sainted legendarie': the Anglo-Ovidian heroines. Appendix: Latin editions of Ovid in Tudor England. Early printed materials consulted.

Editorial Reviews

"[Reid] makes a refreshingly eclectic "sampling" of material from writers at the periphery to those at the centre of the canon, from ballads and broadsheets to Shakespearean drama ..."

- Review of English Studies

"This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book, which should be read by anyone interested in classical reception in this period."

- Spenser Review

"Fascinating ... an impressively wrought and thoroughly researched intricacy of texts, intertexts, literary transmission, and of the real and fictional figures adapting and moulding the reception of arguably the most popular classical writer from the late medieval era to the Tudor age."

- International Journal of the Classical Tradition

"The crux of Reid's thesis is an important idea: the representation of books in literature allows us to glimpse not only the cultural weight of specific texts, but also the "material identities of books and the historical conditions of the book trade"."

- SHARP News

"(...)This is an excellent book with some fascinating insights. It is very detailed in its literary references and covers a lot of material."

- Natasha Amendola, Monash University in Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, volume 33.1 (2016).

From the Publisher