Ovid and the Renaissance body / edited by Goran V. Stanivukovic.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This collection of original essays uses contemporary theory to examine Renaissance writers' reworking of Ovid's texts in order to analyze the strategies in the construction of the early modern discourses of gender, sexuality, and writing.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Stanivukovic's goal is to reexamine from the standpoint of contemporary critical theory (especially feminism, queer theory, and intertextuality) the ways in which Renaissance writers used Ovid. The 13 essays (plus introduction and afterword) cover a wide range of writers and genres. Unfortunately, the achievement is uneven, with arguments ranging from the genuinely insightful to the tenuous. Despite the book's emphasis on theory, in some essays its use feels Procrustean, and the stylistic density of some contributions will be hard going for undergraduates. On the whole, undergraduates interested in exploring the impact of Ovid on Renaissance literature would be better served by Jonathan Bate's Shakespeare and Ovid (CH, Jan'94) or by either of two other collections of essays on Ovid in the Renaissance: Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, ed. by Charles Martindale (CH, Sep'88), and Shakespeare's Ovid: The Metamorphoses in the Plays and Poems, ed. by A.B. Taylor (2000). The present volume will serve advanced upper-division undergraduates through faculty. B. E. Brandt South Dakota State University