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    Ovid's Heroines
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    Ovid's Heroines
    Unavailable
    Ovid's Heroines
    Ebook148 pages1 hour

    Ovid's Heroines

    By Clare Pollard

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Ovid's Heroides, written in Rome some time between 25 and 16 BC, was once his most popular work. The title translates as Heroines. It is a series of poems in the voices of women from Greek and Roman myth -including Phaedra, Medea, Penelope and Ariadne -addressed to the men they love. Claimed as both the first book of dramatic monologues and the first of epistolary fiction, Heroines is also a radical text in its literary transvestism, and in presenting the same story from often very different, subjective perspectives. For a long time it was Ovid's most influential work, loved by Chaucer, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Donne, and translated by Dryden and Pope. Clare Pollard's new translation rediscovers Ovid's Heroines for the 21st century, with a cast of women who are brave, bitchy, sexy, suicidal, horrifying, heartbreaking and surprisingly modern. Two of the most popular poetry books of recent times have been Ted Hughes's new version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife, dramatic monologues by women from myth and history giving their side of the story. Clare Pollard's new take on Ovid's Heroines is another book in that vein, bringing classic tales to life for modern readers. 'In many ways Pollard, a wunderkind who wrote her first poetry collection while still at school, is a good match for the equally precocious Ovid… these are lively versions, seasoned with both agony and irony, reanimating Ovid's originals' - Josephine Balmer, The Times. 'Ovid died in exile, booted out of Rome for what he described as carmen et error -a poem and a mistake. These letters remind us that he, of all Latin love poets, understood the plight of the person left behind, waiting for news. He knew that even bad news was less excruciating than no news. And this breezy, witty translation should give new readers the chance to share this understanding' - Natalie Haynes, The Guardian.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloodaxe Books
    Release dateMar 27, 2014
    ISBN9781780370903
    Unavailable
    Ovid's Heroines
    Author

    Clare Pollard

    Clare Pollard is an award-winning poet and playwright based in London. She is the author of five poetry collections and the former editor of the Modern Poetry in Translation magazine. Her acclaimed first novel, Delphi, was a Guardian Best Book of 2022. The Modern Fairies is her second novel.

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    Reviews for Ovid's Heroines

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    • 4/5
      I'll confess to being skeptical when picking this book up. I knew the Heroides had a low reputation (unfairly, I now realise) and I hadn't rated Pollard's own work that highly before. However this turned out to be a great discovery. The Heroides deserve to be much better known, as they once were - and it seems clear that only misogyny has hampered their reputation in recent centuries. Pollard herself does a fine job with the translation. Personally I found some of the decisions a little *too* anachronistic - e.g. the use of the word 'slag': which took me back to my schooldays, but doesn't achieve the Read-this-by-the-Trevi-Fountain magic that was aimed for. Beyond this, Pollard's direct style works perfectly: putting the emotion front-and-centre rather than cluttering it up with fussy syntax. Glad to have been introduced to this.