Symbolae Osloenses· 2026Q2
Silenced Muse: Gender, Voice, and Control in Ovid’s Amores
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- 2026year
Short summary
Ovid strategically controls the female beloved's (puella) voice in his Amores, rarely allowing direct speech and instead mediating, omitting, or scripting her words.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Ovid's Amores rarely features the puella's voice directly, despite her portrayal as a dominant figure.
- The puella's voice is controlled through absence, mediation (reporting, projection, scripting), and limited direct quotation.
- This control functions as a poetic device aligning with elegiac discourse on gender, power, and authorship.
- The manipulation of the female voice reflects broader Roman discourses on gender, speech, and authority.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
This paper examines the staging and control of the puella’s voice in Ovid’s Amores, analysing how the poet withholds, mediates, or selectively quotes her speech. Although cast as the domina with significant influence over the poet’s life and art, the puella’s voice is rarely heard directly. Through close readings of key elegies, this study identifies three principal strategies through which Ovid frames the puella’s voice: (1) its absence in otherwise dialogic situations, (2) its mediation through reporting, projection, or scripting, and (3) its occasional appearance in carefully controlled instances of direct quotation. The article argues that Ovid’s control over the puella’s voice functions as a poetic device that aligns with a wider elegiac discourse of gender, power, and authorship, in which the puella becomes a scripta puella, a textual construct shaped by the representational structures of elegiac discourse. The manipulation of the female voice in the Amores is also shown to engage with broader Roman discourses concerning gender, speech, and authority.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Symbolae Osloenses, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Anthropology
AnthropologySocial Sciences