'Autofiction' al femminile. Arte di raccontare ed effetti di genere in Ovidio

Ovid experiments with feminine writing in the Epistulae heroidum. This experiment with ‘gender effects’ within the conventions of a poetic genre continues in the female Ich-Erzählungen in the Metamorphoses. Here, too, the author’s narrative complicity with his feminine characters is combined with irony at their expense, which insinuates a male perspective between the lines. The erotic pursuit, a recurrent pattern in this ‘epic of desire’, undergoes interesting variations when the narrating voice is that of a victim, or a fugitive. This can be seen in Arethusa’s autobiographical tale to Ceres. Arethusa’s version of Alpheus’ love for her defies expectations, as it stops before the well-known end of the story. Here, the ‘nymph-hunting’ scheme, established by the Apollo and Daphne paradigm, frames the figure usually characterised as a victim of rape as a winner. This nymph shapes her ‘autofiction’ self-consciously; nevertheless, Ovid’s irony is felt between the lines. The nymph’s tale challenges the hero’s tale in the Aeneid: Arethusa corrects Aeneas in her story, and strives to create a heroic profile for herself. This female re-interpretation of a typical Ovidian narrative scheme fosters further gender effects: the nymph’s nonchalant description of her beauty is a ‘sporting’ version of Ovid’s voyeuristic descriptions of the female body; her self-definition as rustica seems to align with the male point of view expressed throughout Ovid’s erotic elegy; and metanarrative features comment on her estranged appropriation of stereotyped Ovidian similes for the female victim’s fear.