Event
Department Colloquium: Sara Myers (UVA) “Bodies and Boundaries: Narrative Patterns in Ovid’s Italian Rape Myths”
Sara Myers, Professor of Classics, University of Virginia
*4:15-4:45 pm: Coffee and cookies in Cohen Hall 2nd Floor Lounge. All are welcome.
Abstract: This talk will focus primarily on Ovid’s two Italian rape narratives, Pomona in Metamorphoses 14 and Flora in Fasti 5 (183-206), both of which seem to be original to Ovid. I will argue that the episodes should be considered as in dialogue with each other and reveal a preoccupation with boundaries– sexual, spatial, generic, and textual¬– and their violation. I will then suggest that this pattern is continued in the other two Italian rape narratives of the Fasti, Lara (2.611-16) and Carna/Cranaë (6.1.125-30).