Sappho’s Shadow: Reading Ovid’s Heroides 15 as Reconstruction

Reading Ovid’s Heroides 15 as Reconstruction
By Clare Kearns

Ovid’s Heroides are fundamentally paradoxical. As a collection of letters that take on the point of view of spurned mythological heroines writing to their former lovers, the poems purport to express the sadness, fear, and anger felt by the heroines from their own perspective—though, of course, the Heroides is the work of male poet Ovid…

The Ethics of Excess: Food and Satire

The Ethics of Excess: Food and Satire
By Clare Kearns

Food and eating have always figured prominently in the work of satirists. That food plays upon the somatic realism of satire is evident, but the relationship between food and satire’s moral criticism is more slippery. What, if anything, makes food consumption an appropriate vehicle for the satirist’s moral commentary, rather than other forms of consumption and excess?