Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters by Fiona Cox (review)

Contemporary studies which set out to engage with, and challenge the meaning of, the work of the Augustan poet Ovid are not uncommon. Indeed, the innumerable ways in which Ovid's imagination can be re-interpreted and re-formed lends itself to renewed analysis by contemporary scholarship. However, where Fiona Cox's contribution to this trend differs is in its specific focus on Ovid's presence in the work of thirteen contemporary female writers. In this volume, Cox judiciously engages with, and analyses, the presence of Ovid in each of her chosen case studies of fiction, drama, and poetry.

With eleven such case studies on female writers, it would be easy to categorise Cox's work as an attempt to reclaim a female voice and write one into a male-authored tradition. However, Cox deftly negotiates this problematic issue associated with women writers and second-wave feminism, addressing the issue directly in her introduction. She acknowledges that studies which evaluate the influence of contemporary feminism on readings of classical poets face a continuing risk of being labelled partisan and exclusionary, speaking only to a limited few. Thus, in an attempt to circumvent this issue, counter this exclusivity, and offer a broader dialogue, Cox sets out to examine her suite of female writers through the lens of third-wave feminism. This solution allows her to tread the fine line of exploring issues of gender, as written by these female writers, but also to write from a consciously gendered position about wider political, ecological, and social concerns. This nuanced approach further affords Cox the chance to explore what she has identified as another unifying theme: the way in which so many of the chosen authors "experience themselves as monsters, either as freakish, or as prodigies of nature, or both" (4). The subtitle of the volume, Strange Monsters, refers to this theme, with Cox drawing attention to how each of these women are transformed from "monstrosity into the marvellous" (24), expanding and challenging the boundaries of the classical tradition, thanks in part to their dialogue with Ovid.

Cox organises her investigation into eleven chapters, each focusing on the work of a particular prominent female writer, or pair of female writers. Throughout each chapter, and the volume as a whole, Cox offers a nuanced examination of the ways in which these contemporary female writers intersect with Ovid; how each writer responds to and adapts the Ovidian narrative to fit with their particular genre; and in turn how each writer retells Ovidian myths in order to comment on issues besetting the modern-day world such as the financial crisis, disease, the NHS postcode lottery, Brexit, terrorist attacks, and female body image. Furthermore, Cox creates a sequence of chapters that is considered, ordered, and well-connected: when one chapter ends, it signals the themes and narratives that will be explored and considered in the next.

Cox takes as her starting point for her analysis the Scottish author and playwright Ali Smith, whose "Ovidianism is nourished by a third-wave agenda" (25), and whose short stories and lectures "enact the magic of transformation and of survival" (44). For Cox, Smith's use of the story of Echo is particularly evocative, allowing the writer space to spark a conversation about disease, anorexia nervosa, and also highlight issues of postcode lottery within the NHS. Ovidian echoes, and how they have shaped contemporary meditations on particular myths, is a theme that Cox continues in the second chapter on Marina Warner, an English novelist, short story writer, and historian. Cox examines The Leto Bundle (2001) and the extent to which Ovid has shaped Warner's fiction: "as he shapes her meditations upon literary survival and tradition, she enables him to speak also of the blight of homelessness and the plight of refugees in the modern world" (62). These themes and concerns are also shared by Yoko Tawada, a Japanese writer...