Fiona Cox and Elena Theodorakopoulos
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199673926
- eISBN:
- 9780191760570
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673926.003.0021
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter is a study of Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith’s reworking of Ovid’s myth of Iphis and Ianthe. Smith democratizes the myth, as in her hands its protagonists are working-class Scottish girls. At ...
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This chapter is a study of Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith’s reworking of Ovid’s myth of Iphis and Ianthe. Smith democratizes the myth, as in her hands its protagonists are working-class Scottish girls. At the same time her network of allusions to A Midsummer Night’s Dream carefully roots her response to Ovid in the very literary tradition that has marginalized women and gay and lesbian writers. She is caught, then, in the same dilemma as that which Jeanette Winterson depicts in her autobiography Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? By taking Smith as a case study we examine the factors that continue to militate against women writers receiving the same recognition as men even in a post-feminist age, while analysing the devices she uses to help transform the literary landscape into a more democratic and enabling force.Less
This chapter is a study of Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith’s reworking of Ovid’s myth of Iphis and Ianthe. Smith democratizes the myth, as in her hands its protagonists are working-class Scottish girls. At the same time her network of allusions to A Midsummer Night’s Dream carefully roots her response to Ovid in the very literary tradition that has marginalized women and gay and lesbian writers. She is caught, then, in the same dilemma as that which Jeanette Winterson depicts in her autobiography Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? By taking Smith as a case study we examine the factors that continue to militate against women writers receiving the same recognition as men even in a post-feminist age, while analysing the devices she uses to help transform the literary landscape into a more democratic and enabling force.
