Ovid and the Renaissance Body

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

The intention of this ambitious volume, declares editor Goran V.
Stanivukovic in his introduction, is to chart a new course in the
current theoretical discourse of the history and theory of the body and
sexuality by introducing “Ovidianism” as a significant cultural
influence in the production of new ideologies of the body in the early
modern period. Ovid, whose myths were the model and inspiration for a
wide variety of Renaissance literature and art, has long been recognized
for his stylistic and thematic influence on early modern writers who
revived and imitated his passionate tales of love, suffering, and human
mutability. The contributors to this collection, however, argue that
Ovid’s influence extended well beyond the formalist and thematic to
provide a discourse of the body and sexuality that contributed to the
shaping of early modern subjectivity and influenced the cultural
production of ideologies of gender and sexual desire.

The 13 essays examine Ovidian discourse from a wide range of
contemporary theoretical approaches: feminism, queer theory, gender
theory, cultural materialism, speech-act theory, and print culture
theory. Through their engagement in the current poststructualist debate
on sexuality, writing, and historicism, the contributors challenge past
ideologies to create a new approach to Ovidian influence on issues of
erotic power and diversity.

This new approach is by no means either uniform or coherent. While
Stanivukovic argues in his introduction for a reconfigured Renaissance
Ovidianism and the plotting of a new critical course for the debate of
early modern subjectivity, the essays demonstrate that this new course
is open to numerous and divergent paths. As Valerie Traub points out in
her afterword, the lack of critical consensus is the inevitable result
of the multiplicity of conceptual methodologies and critical stances
involved, and the indeterminacy and contradictions inherent in the texts
themselves.

While this book offers no clear answers, it raises many intriguing
questions and successfully argues for a critical re-evaluation of
Ovidianism as a cultural resource for early modern representations of
body, gender, and sexuality.