1 The letter-writers have the opportunity to provide a more personal, or even alternative, narrative, because the epistolary genre blurs the boundaries between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’. Most importantly, the letter opened for Ovid a window into a world of unconstrained subjectivity, multiple narrative perspectives, and occasional distortion of reality on the part of the letter-writers (whether intentional or not). 1 My introductory discussion here is largely based on Vaiopoulos – Michalopoulos – Michalopoulos (202 (.)ġOvid’s choice of the verse elegiac letter as the appropriate genre for the treatment of the love stories of abandoned and betrayed mythological women had obvious advantages, which the talented author made the most of.* I would like to thank the anonymous referees who helped me improve this paper with their valuable s (.).It also attempts to trace each female letter-writer’s motivation for quoting these words, the criteria governing the choice of these quotations, and their purpose within each letter. What about the male voice, though? Is it fully lost under the veil of feminine writing? This paper seeks to bring the male voice to the forefront by examining certain passages from the single Heroides, in which the male voice is heard, either in indirect speech or through direct quoting of the words of the male lovers. On this point Ovidian critics have not reached a unanimous verdict. a male poet’s, ability to successfully assume the female voice and write from the perspective of women, a challenging feat in all respects.
The single letters, in particular, supposedly written by well-known legendary heroines abandoned by, or separated from, their “heroic” husbands or lovers, have been extensively treated as regards Ovid’s, i.e. Ovid’s Heroides, both the single and double letters, have been intensively explored in terms of the role and character of the female voice throughout the last few decades.
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