Ovid's Art and the Wife of Bath: The Ethics of Erotic Violence
- Author / Editor
- Desmond, Marilynn.
Ovid's Art and the Wife of Bath: The Ethics of Erotic Violence
- Published
- Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006.
- Physical Description
- xiii, 206 pp.
- Description
- Desmond studies the discourse of erotic violence in medieval literature and iconography, surveying depictions of the "mounted Aristotle" and focusing on the adaptations of material from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" found in the letters of Héoïse and Abélard, the "Roman de la Rose," WBP, and Christine de Pizan's contributions to the Querelle de la Rose. The letters of Héoïse and Pizan "offer alternative perspectives" to the "canonical reworkings" of Ovid, while the Roman and WBP reflect the "erotic potential of intimate violence" that has connections with sadomasochism, as well as being rooted in the homoerotics of love in Ovid's imperial Rome. The popularity of the Wife of Bath today indicates that the "strategic relations" of love and violence in WBP continue to shape our contemporary attitudes.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.