Intertextual ecology, rural imagery, and meta-poetry in Ovid’s "Heroides"

Abstract

Ovid’s Heroides have usually been read in terms of crossing of genres, with particular emphasis on the mixture of epistolarity with elegiac poetry, and also with elements from rhetoric. This paper analyses excerpts from the work in which rural themes, vocabulary and imagery are explored, in order to investigate the presence of features from ancient didactic poetry in the Heroides. According to the relations between nature and literature, I discuss, in selected passages from the first fifteen epistles (the so-called single Heroides), the presence of similes, metaphors, and descriptions concerning the rural ambience and the rural activities (such as agriculture, hunting, raising of animals). My purpose is to investigate the new meanings that such rural imagery provides to the interpretation of the work, and to highlight the intertextual connections with the ancient didactic tradition, in particular with Virgil’s Georgics.