Transvestite Achilles: Gender and Genre in Statius' Achilleid
Statius' Achilleid is a playful, witty, and open-ended epic in the manner of Ovid. As we follow Achilles' metamorphosis from wild boy to demure girl to lover to hero, the poet brilliantly illustrates a series of contrasting codes of behavior: male and female, epic and elegiac. This first full-length study of the poem addresses not only the narrative itself, but also sets the myth of Achilles on Scyros within a broad interpretive framework. The exploration ranges from the reception of the...
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Offers the first book-length examination of Statius' unfinished epic, the Achilleid.
Introduction;1. Opening nights at the opera 1641-1741; 2. The design of the Achilleid; 3. Womanhood, rhetoric, and performance; 4. Semivir, Semifer, Semideus; 5. Transvestism in myth and ritual; 6. Rape, repetition, and romance; 7. Conclusion.
