The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare

Download or read book The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare written by Lynn Enterline and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This persuasive book analyses the complex, often violent connections between body and voice in Ovid's Metamorphoses and narrative, lyric and dramatic works by Petrarch, Marston and Shakespeare. Lynn Enterline describes the foundational yet often disruptive force that Ovidian rhetoric exerts on early modern poetry, particularly on representations of the self, the body and erotic life. Paying close attention to the trope of the female voice in the Metamorphoses, as well as early modern attempts at transgendered ventriloquism that are indebted to Ovid's work, she argues that Ovid's rhetoric of the body profoundly challenges Renaissance representations of authorship as well as conceptions about the difference between male and female experience. This vividly original book makes a vital contribution to the study of Ovid's presence in Renaissance literature.