Ovid's Lovers: Desire, Difference and the Poetic Imagination

This study, which shifts the focus in Ovidian criticism from intertextuality to intersubjectivity, explores the relationship between self and other, and in particular that between male and female worlds, which lies at the heart of Ovid's vision of poetry and the imagination. By moving beyond the more often asked questions of Ovid, such as whether he is 'for' or 'against' women, it aims to explore how gendered subjects converse, compete and co-create, and illustrates how the tale of Medusa, alongside that of Narcissus, becomes a fundamental myth for Ovidian poetics.