Roman Gender in the Roman de Silence

Abstract

Language will be shown to play a key part not only in the presentation of gender in the Metamorphoses and Roman de Silence but also in the Roman concept of gender, as highlighted by Corbeill, with regards to the effect of grammatical gender on Roman attitudes to masculine/feminine people. The chapter focuses on the Ovidian reception at play in the Roman de Silence, that has rarely been recognized in most secondary literature on Silence. The power of language is a key aspect of multiple Egyptian sources which may well have influenced Ovid’s presentation of Isis and is also key to the genre of fables. Queer self-affirmations are thus their own form of transformation, trans forming reality itself without any need for physical changes, reinforcing the legitimacy of all coming out stories, regardless of the shape they take. In conclusion, reception of Roman ideas about gender is rife within the Roman de Silence, taking Phaedrus, Ovid, Virgil as source material.