Ovid Heroides

Ovid's collection of "Heroines" is comprised of fifteen elegiac "letters" from mythological heroines to the lovers who have mistreated or abandoned them, as well as three pairs of letters between heroic lovers and their beloveds. We will read selected Heroides in Latin and the remaining poems in English translation. Emphasis will be placed on close reading of the Latin and on the poems' engagement both with poetic issues (e.g., genre and allusion) and with the wider political, social, and cultural discourses of Augustan Rome.