I suoi principali interessi riguardano l’epigramma greco e latino, letterario ed epigrafico (dalle origini fino ad Ausonio), l’elegia ellenistica e romana, la Appendix Vergiliana e il dramma senecano.

Ha organizzato diversi Convegni internazionale, pubblicandone gli Atti (

The Ambiguity of Love and the Ideology of Rape in Ovidian Ekphraseis: Pygmalion’s Prequel to Arachne’s Story

Stella Alekou

https://doi.org/10.60983/003-2.3

ABSTRACT

 This chapter rereads the stories of two great artists in the Metamorphoses, a talented and daring girl from Lydia, Arachne, and a misogynist sculptor from Paphos, Pygmalion, to examine the ambiguous representation of love in Ovid’s epic. It aims to show that the story of the statue ‘loved’ by its creator (Book 10) acts as a prequel to the episode of the young weaver who repeatedly exposes rape in her tapestry (Book 6). With focus on the two ekphraseis and the visual illusions they create, this work sheds light on the artistic denunciation of sexual crimes and the legal boundaries of love, as well as on the Ovidian re-evaluation of female paradigms. In examining ‘what love is not’, the study attempts to trace the mythological origins of a contemporary issue, as dealt with in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: that of sexual abuse, and women’s (in)visibility and silencing.