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Article: The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Shakespeare Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Associated University Presses. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2000
Lynn Enterline begins this book with an exhilaratingly intelligent and subtle reading of what she calls "misfirings" in Ovid's treatment of bodily violence, voice, and poetic composition in the Metamorphoses. Looking at what happens to figures such as Actaeon, Orpheus, and Philomela, whose experience of physical attack leads to a shattering loss of identity and speech, she argues that such episodes reveal the instability of any speaking self: we speak languages already given; our words fail to capture our states of mind; we can be only what other people see and hear us as being. Starting from this deconstructive and ...