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WIT, HUMOUR AND IRONY IN HEROIDES 9

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

P. Murgatroyd
P. Murgatroyd*
Affiliation:
McMaster University
*
murgatro@mcmaster.ca
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Extract

Heroides 9 takes the form of a letter sent by Deianira to Hercules as a reinforcement to the tunic smeared with Nessus' blood which she has already dispatched in the mistaken belief that it will revive the hero's love for her. In this epistle she tries to persuade her husband to give up his latest girlfriend (Iole) by showing him that she loves him, by arousing pity for herself, and by making him feel ashamed of his philandering and see that he thereby disgraces himself. Obviously there is pathos here, particularly as the deaths of Hercules and Deianira loom in the background, but there is also wit, irony, and (especially dark) humour, creating a piquant tonal mixture which has been almost entirely neglected by critics. They have seen the sadness, and some of the irony (which is taken to be purely tragic), but they have not grasped the facetious aspects, whereby our irreverent poet ensures that the piece does not lapse into mawkishness and engages the head as well as the heart.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 853 - 855
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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References

1 See esp. Casali, S., ‘Tragic irony in Ovid, Heroides 9 and 11’, CQ 45 (1995), 505–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Jacobson, H., Ovid's Heroides (Princeton, NJ, 1974)Google Scholar, 238, expressly denies that the poem is meant to be comic.

3 The poem's authenticity has been doubted. I am with those who believe that Ovid was the author: see esp. Jacobson (n. 2), 228–34; Casali, S., Heroidum Epistula IX (Florence, 1995), 227–33Google Scholar; Bolton, C.M., ‘In defence of Heroides 9’, Mnemosyne 50 (1997), 424–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lindheim, S.H., Mail and Female (Madison, WI, 2003)Google Scholar, 62 ff.; and Fulkerson, L., The Ovidian Heroine as Author (Cambridge, 2005), 108–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Certainly the clever and extensive flippancy that I find evident in this composition would be beyond most imitators.

4 The obvious humour in connection with the affair with Omphale has been briefly acknowledged by Vessey, D.W.T.C., ‘Notes on Ovid, Heroides 9’, CQ 19 (1969), 353CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosati, G., Ovidio Lettere di Eroine (Milan, 1989), 189Google Scholar; and Bolton (n. 3), 429.

5 The text used is that of Showerman, G., Ovid: Heroides Amores, rev. G.P. Goold (Cambridge, MA, 1977).Google Scholar

6 At 57–8, 61–2, 75–6, and 84–102.

7 See 2, 5–6, 12, 25–6, 69–78, 105–6, 107–8, 109–10, and 113–14. Jacobson (n. 2), 240, comments in passing on the irony in 6.

8 On the irony in insignitus, see Casali (n. 3), 152.

9 Cf. e.g. Ovid Met. 9.165.

10 See OLD s.v. 4. There would be further humour in 141 if Ovid wrote letifero (on that reading, see Casali [n. 2], 509, and Barchiesi, A., Speaking Volumes [London, 2001], 110–11Google Scholar). The praeteritio at 49–52 and Hercules' sexual voracity there (esp. at 51–2) may also be intended as droll features by Ovid; and one may be invited to smile as well at fire being part of Deianira's family history in 156 and at the notion of ‘like mother, like daughter’ in 157.

11 Wit and humour are well established as typically Ovidian features. For irony elsewhere in the Heroides and generally in Ovid, see e.g. Jacobson (n. 2), 102–4, 136, 200–2, 206, 211; Galinsky, G.K., Ovid's Metamorphoses (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA, 1975)Google Scholar, 37, 158, 171, 173–9, 257; Fulkerson (n. 3), 8, 9, 14, 52, 87, 111; Murgatroyd, P., Mythical and Legendary Narrative in Ovid's Fasti (Leiden, 2005), 192–3, 241CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boyd, B.W., Ovid's Literary Loves (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997)Google Scholar, 4, 12, 18, 89, 118, 121, 124, 141, 147, 157, 166, 205; Knox, P.E. (ed.), A Companion to Ovid (Oxford, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 46, 347.