The Lay of the Land in Ovid's "Perseid" (Met. 4.610–5.249)

This paper explores Ovid's elaboration of the metaphor that associates the female body with the earth in a series of tales at the end of Metamorphoses 4, in which women and landscape are closely linked. I argue that Ovid documents in his Perseus narrative not only woman's "natural" function as plot-space, the ease with which she is assimilated to the topography of epic action, but also the correlation between the male gaze and masculine subjectivity, which come together in the visual objectification of women (Medusa, Andromeda) and landscape (Libya) to confirm the superiority of male over female.