Seen, not heard: feminea lingua in Ovid's Fasti and the critical gaze

This chapter tests the degree to which the Fasti is immersed in and co-opted by the prevailing masculinist culture of its time, and compares interpretations of modern critics examining Ovid's (re)presentations of women. It finds some colluding with the poet's conservative phallocentric imperatives on ritual(ized) female activity. It contends that the ways by which Ovid engages in negating, inhibiting, silencing, or slaying women are reflected in modern interpretative practices, and notes the operation of an intertextuality between the criticized and the critic. It offers a reading of Ovid's Regifugium and the rape of Lucretia as a suggested methodology for an interpretation sensitive to sexual(ized) nuances in the Fasti and a way of delimiting and abnegating the perpetuation of the Philomela/Tacita syndrome in contemporary literary-critical and histori(ographi)cal practices.