Tragedy in Ovid: Theater, Metatheater, and the Transformation of a Genre

Ovid is today best known for his grand epic, Metamorphoses, and elegiac works like the Ars Amatoria and Heroides. Yet he also wrote a Medea, now unfortunately lost. This play kindled in him a lifelong interest in the genre of tragedy, which informed his later poetry and enabled him to continue his career as a tragedian – if only on the page instead of the stage. This book surveys tragic characters, motifs and modalities in the Heroides and the Metamorphoses. In writing love letters, Ovid's ...