Voce voco. Some Text Linguistic Observations on Ovid Heroides 10

What is it about?

In his article Voce voco. Ariadne in Ovids Heroides und die ‘weibliche Stimme’ (Mnemosyne, this issue), Christoph Pieper proposes a metapoetic interpretation of Ovid Heroides 10 in terms of a gradual awakening (and subsequent faltering) of Ariadne’s literary voice. The present contribution serves as a supplement to this article, in that it provides some text linguistic support for this metapoetic reading. In a linguistically and narratologically oriented discussion of the structure of Heroides 10, it is shown how epic and elegy literally merge in this poem, for instance by means of an ingenious mixing of discourse modes and time frames, and a subtle play with the inherent ambiguity of the present tense. The analysis reveals by which formal means the poet manages to reconcile all of Ariadne’s different roles and perspectives in the poem (epistolary speaker, epic speaker, elegiac speaker, narrative character), and integrate them, by way of literary experiment, in one coherent text.

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