The early modern afterlife of Ovidian erotics: Dryden's Heroides

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines translations of Ovid's Heroides as they evolve from the late sixteenth century into the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It focuses on the figure of Sappho in Ovid's fifteenth epistle as the principal guide to the trajectory of an Ovidian erotics that develops within a changing literary and cultural context in early modern London. The analysis begins with a brief survey of early translations and then explores in detail the additions, variations, and accretions that occur in the many editions (from 1680 until after 1720) of Ovid's Epistles, translated by several hands, originally gathered by John Dryden and published by Jacob Tonson both during and after Dryden's lifetime, as well as the significance of the parodies of Dryden's collection and the independent life taken on, a century later, by Sir Carr Scrope's translation for Dryden of ‘Sappho to Phaon’. The essay contributes to our knowledge of the life of literary coteries in early modern London, of early book history as it was guided by an important London publisher, and of early modern gender dynamics as they were mediated by London literary circles and their relation to the classics.

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