Browsing by Author "Corvino, Jesse Ryan"

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    Artistic Expression and Personal Identity: The Figure of the Huntress in Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses
    (2024-09-19) Corvino, Jesse Ryan; Toohey, Peter; Cebrian, Reyes Bertolin; Hughes, Lisa; Konshuh, Courtnay; Mackie, Christopher
    The huntress who endeavours to remain unwed is at variance with the Roman girls and young women who almost universally become wives (and mothers). Why, then, is this seemingly unconventional literary figure of such interest to the early Imperial Latin poets Virgil and Ovid? In order to ascertain this, this thesis attempts to answer the following questions pertaining to the “how” and “why” of the huntress’ depiction in Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses: did the poets adhere to any sort of paradigm for the huntress (the “how”); and why did they include the huntress in their poems (the “why”). My methodological approach to answer these questions comprises lexical analyses of the passages containing these characters and the categorization of the data on the huntress’ characterization drawn from them according to the five characteristics that I propose comprise the huntress. The “how” of Virgil’s huntress consists of a paradigm, while Ovid does not have one. With respect to the question of “why”, the huntress is a means for Virgil to express the idea of the hunt in the Aeneid and permits a high level of creative expression that other female characters do not. Ovid’s purpose for including her in the Metamorphoses is to explore certain ideas relating to rape and the “erotic hunt” and the opposition of specific concepts pertaining to sexual/romantic relationships. Since the literary huntress is a diametric character to actual Roman girls and young women, the larger question arises about whether these poets’ ideas about the former reflect anything about their attitudes towards the latter. It is the case for Virgil that they do, and, building on Ramsby’s arguments about Roman women and autonomy, I argue that he uses the huntress to express his observations regarding women in his society. Ovid, on the other hand, seems to use the huntress to convey the theme of victimization with respect to personal identity which involves the huntress being forced to give up her identity due to the interference from a god or goddess, a theme which I suggest may have personally resonated with him.