LAT 395-01 - Advanced Special Topic: Ovid on Troy

4 credits (Fall)

We will study Heroides, a set of letters composed by the poet Ovid (43 BCE-17/18 CE) in the voice of literary characters who populate the legend of Troy. In these letters women complain to their husbands or lovers who either are separated from them or have abandoned them: Penelope to Ulysses or Dido to Aeneas, for example. One pair of letters is an exchange between Paris and Helen. We will study how Ovid straddles the established genres of Greek and Roman epic and elegy in order to fashion original characterizations of already complex literary figures.

Prerequisite: LAT 222.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: M. Cummins