Ursula K. Le Guin's Lavinia: a dialogue with Classical Roman epic

摘要

Ursula K. Le Guin's novel, Lavinia (2008. London: Gollancz), is a fictional autobiography of the Trojan hero Aeneas's second wife, Lavinia of Latium, with whom Aeneas founded a small village which, three centuries later, became the city of Rome. Several feminist writers have written back, through their fiction, to classical models, and my article argues that Lavinia shares in their creative project. Further, through metafictional irony, the text situates the character of Lavinia in a most unusual position as both inside and outside Virgil's poem. Lavinia's contingency becomes, in Le Guin's revisioning of Virgil's epic, the focus of the text. By insisting on this aspect of Lavinia's ontology, Le Guin skilfully reverses the dynamics of discursive power in the Aeneid, bringing Virgil and Lavinia into a relation of parity.View full textDownload full textKeywordsAeneid, contingency, feminist revision, Lavinia, Le Guin, presence/absence, women's life writingRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2012.729717