Gender Literature Research Articles

Focusing on the individual in cross‐sectoral collaboration: A configurational approach

AbstractResearch focuses on various macro and meso aspects of collaboration and less on the individuals who make decisions about their organizations' collaborations. Organizational leaders make these decisions based on their interpretations, influenced by their personal characteristics. Existing studies examining organizational outcomes such as a decision to collaborate typically consider these characteristics separately and independently, ignoring the reality that a leader's characteristics jointly and interactively shape perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors. We focus on five prominent characteristics in the literature—gender, educational attainment, prior cross‐sector experience, current cross‐sector affiliation, and tenure in position—and study their configurational dynamics regarding the organization‐level outcome—the propensity of cross‐sector collaboration. We employ qualitative comparative analysis to develop and test a configurational model for cross‐sector collaboration, using survey data of local government and nonprofit leaders in Lebanon. The analysis offers exploratory insights into four configurational types of leaders whose organizations opt to collaborate at the local level.

Transgenerational Burden in W. B. Yeats’s Poem “Leda and the Swan”: A Feminist Study

The transgenerational burden presented in W. B. Yeats' poem "Leda and the Swan" is examined in this research from a feminist standpoint. As shown in the legendary retelling, the analysis explores the many layers of patriarchal power relations and their long-lasting effects on succeeding generations. The text uses feminist literary theory to explain how Yeats's depiction of Leda's terrible encounter with the holy swan incorporates larger societal meanings and sustains repressive mechanisms that have an ongoing effect on society. The transgenerational burden arises from the offspring of this encounter. The children born to Leda carry the weight of their divine parentage and the complexities of their intertwined lineage. The examination scrutinizes the interplay of gender roles, agency, and the consequential burdens borne by women, revealing the poem as a nuanced commentary on the enduring legacy of patriarchal dominance. Through this exploration, the study contributes to the broader discourse on gender in literature, shedding light on the intricate intergenerational complexities inherent in Yeats's poetic explanation. The Leda and the Swan myth highlights the enduring consequences of patriarchal power dynamics and their role in shaping transgenerational burdens within the narrative.

Depression in Sylvia Plath and Abu Alqasem Al Shabbi's Selected Poems: A Comparative Study

Depression is a universal phenomenon that can haunt men as well as women regardless of any social, cultural or literary background. Sylvia Plath and Abu Alqasem Al Shabbi are two poets whose poetry reflects the prevailing concept of depression due to some inner as well as outer causes. This study is significant since it investigates depression of two poets from different cultures despite the short span of their lives. It presents Al Shabbi as a paralleling poetic figure to Plath. The present study aims at investigating these causes of depression and to figure out similarities and differences between Plath and Al Shabbi's depression in the selected poems 'Daddy, Lady Lazarus, Tears and The Nameless Depression'. The presents study has used the descriptive, analytical and comparative approach. In spite of the fact that Plath and Al Shabbi did not live at the same time and culture, depression is the uniting factor between them. This study concludes that depression in the case of Plath is due to the patriarchy of men over women in America whether a father, a husband or any male-figure whereas depression in the case of Al Shabbi is due the patriarchy of the same literary gender in Tunisia.

Schreibende Frauen zwischen Ausschluss, Teilhabe und Sichtbarkeit

Abstract This article deals with the feminist history of research on female authorship and its entanglements with the development of Gender Studies. It argues that new impulses of research in literary Gender Studies have been affected by literature itself which may also help today to develop new perspectives on female and diverse concepts of authorship and writing.

ANOCRITICISM: THEORIZING AND DISCOVERING INTERSECTIONS OF AGE AND GENDER

Abstract This paper presents historical research on the theoretical foundations and application of ‘anocriticism’ as a method to trace portrayals of female aging in American literary texts to understand what it means to be “aged by culture” (Gullette 2004). Originally developed in the 1990s in context of American Studies as an analytical framework for the analysis of cultural representations of intersections of age and gender in literature, anocriticism brings together the feminist tradition of Elaine Showalter’s (1985) “gynocriticism” – a study of women writers and of the history, styles, themes, genres and structures of writing by women – through analysis of narratives and Germaine Greer’s (1992) use of “anophobia” (from Latin “anus” for “old woman”) to describe the fear of old women. The paper presents examples of anocriticism in practice in age studies and gerontology and highlights its potential for future multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary application.

Reproducing Colonial Ideologies in Decolonization

Though James Cameron’s 2009 box office sensation Avatar overtly criticizes colonial capitalism, its conventional masculinist narrative reproduces ideologies that support colonialism. This essay analyzes the film using several post-colonial theorists to display its inability to engage in anti-colonial critique. In doing so, I outline the importance of considering the complexity of gender in literature that addresses colonial violence. Building upon the work of other scholars who have examined representations of gender in Avatar, this paper specifically addresses the masculinity of the protagonist, Jake Sully. Initially, I employ the work of Edward Said and Ann Laura Stoler to consider how the film reinscribes a stereotypical gender binary in its depiction of colonial contact between the humans and the Na’vi, thereby negating the intricate relationship between gender and colonialism. The paper then shifts to focus on the anti-colonial efforts of the Na’vi led by Jake in his Avatar body. Frantz Fanon and others assist in defining Avatar’s problematic appropriation of decolonization into Jake’s masculinity complex. This analysis determines that for creative works to consider colonial violence without contributing to it, they must avoid replicating dominating masculinity tropes formed within the contexts of colonialism.

Woman as a Character and Author in the Albanian Literature (Inter-influences of European Literature)

The Albanians are an ancient people in the Balkans with very rich oral literature, but very late written literature, which was not written until after the 15th century. The late documentation certainly has to do with the existential and historical circumstances that our people lived through. Compared to the age of the people and their oral history, this literature seems to have emerged so late in terms of the authorship of women writers. They were characters before they became women writers. The written literature is simply late in comparison to the antiquity of the people and their oral texts in terms of the authorship of women writers. Before they were characters, they were authors. If we look at the chronological context of Albanian literary historiography, first we had the literature about women, then the literature of women authors, and lately, more and more influenced by secular literature, we have started to create and read feminist literature of our women authors, so we call this literature gender literature. In the process of development of Albanian literature (over time and geographical space), in this paper, I treat the woman from her character to her creativity. I have treated her in this paper both comparatively and influencing and empirically: from the referential level to the narratological level.

Re-gendering Smart Classicism: Franklin P. Adams, Dorothy Parker, and the Middlebrow Classical Verse Revival

This essay analyses a strain of modern classicism other than the high modernist classicism of Hulme, Pound, and Eliot. Its practitioners were middlebrow writers associated with the newspaper columns and ‘smart magazines’ thriving in New York City during the 1910s and 1920s. Led by the columnist, popular poet, and Algonquin Round Table fixture, Franklin P. Adams, ‘smart classicism’ took its inspiration from ancient Rome's elegists, satirists, and epigrammatists. Adams's smart classicist poems complicate current accounts of early twentieth-century American poetry, of modern(ist) classicism, and of the literary legacy of the smart writers and the Round Table. Dorothy Parker's poetic rejoinders to smart classicism re-gender the masculinist speakers and attitudes of Adams's light verse – and the verse of the ancient poets he emulates and translates. This contextualisation clarifies neglected aspects of Parker's poetic achievements: her erudition, critiques of literary gender politics ancient and modern, and role in articulating a female counterpart to the smart magazines’ suffering Little Man figure.

Level of variations of the aortic bifurcation and distance measurements between the aortic bifurcation and the common iliac bifurcations

Introduction: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the vertebral levels of the aortic bifurcation (AB) in patients with and without the abdominal aorta (AA) deviation and to measure the distances between the AB and the right-left common iliac bifurcations (CIBs) which are crucial anatomical information, especially for anterior lumbar interbody fusion surgery. Additionally, we made comparisons levels of the AB according to sex and examined whether the results were statistically significant, which we could not find other studies comparing gender in literature. Material and Methods: The images of 721 patients, undergoing angiography with multidetector computed tomography between January 2016 and October 2019, were reviewed retrospectively. The AB levels of the patients with and without the AA deviation were classified and evaluated separately. It was measured the distances between the level of the AB and the right and left CIBs with the 3-dimensional ruler technique in only 207 of 721 patients. Results: It was detected seven different vertebral levels of the AB among patients (116 patients) with the AA deviation, in which is the highest L4-upper (27.59%), and 11 different vertebral levels of the AB among patients (605 patients) without the AA deviation, in which is the highest L4-upper (22.48%). When comparing cases with and without AA deviation, a statistically significant difference was found between the sexes (P < 0.05). Discussion and Conclusion: The presented study demonstrates that there is a significant relationship between the genders at some levels. The preoperative information of the morphological variations of the AB may be very useful for laparoscopic, invasive procedures, and spinal surgery procedures. At the same time, these variation information reveals new information for anatomy.

Gender in Literature: Crossing the Lines of Individuals in a Philippine Fiction

Under Gender Criticism, the researchers analysed Carlos Bulosan’s My Father Goes to Court to unveil the biases, stereotypes, issues, and tendencies as regard gender through the roles played by the characters in the story. Results show that on the surface, the male characters portrayed their roles based on what the society and culture accorded or dictated to them as authoritative, powerful, and dominant. Similarly, female characters were projected as powerless, weak, affective, and secondary to men. However, consciously or unconsciously, both characters crossed the borders and the lines of each other by performing roles not expected of them. On the one hand, male characters growled down to others, laughed their hearts out, and were protected. Then, on the other hand, female characters exercised power, showed leadership, manifested decision-making skills, and served as protectors. The researchers further revealed that gender is not a role to be played but an activity to be complete to avoid setting limits to any person’s tendencies. A study using the same literary text is recommended to continue its afterlife.

Renewing the coal mining past

Abstract This article examines how inhabitants of Heerlen, a town in the province of Limburg in the southeast of the Netherlands, renew the cultural memory of coal mining in the area through parodic linguistic and cultural practices linked to the (re)articulation of collective local and social identities. Heerlen became a center for the coal mining industry in the Netherlands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The closure of the mines between 1965 and 1974 had devastating consequences for the economic, social, and cultural developments of the area. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the region’s mining past, creating new momentum for Heerlen in its transition from a struggling former mining area to a city focusing on long-term socio-economic development and cultural innovation. In this context, new practices of cultural memory are emerging through local performances of language and culture that operate to reconstruct Heerlen’s coal mining past through parodic repetition. By discussing two case studies exemplifying the creative ways in which dominant accounts of the mining past are being rearticulated, we explain how the use of parody may serve to undermine the interacting social norms, identities, and hierarchies that have come to shape cultural memories of mining in communities historically defined by working-class and male-dominated labor. The article integrates linguistic and sociolinguistic research, studies of regional history, and theories of parody rooted in contemporary literary criticism and gender studies, to demonstrate the importance of place-bound practices of languageculture as a compelling force of linguistic and socio-cultural renewal.

Who by Fire

The Pururava-caritai (‘The Adventures of Pururavas’) is an unstudied sixteenth-century Tamil adaptation of the famous Vedic legend of Pururavas, which introduces an extensive addition to the original story. One episode within this supplement narrates a trial by fire gone through by the protagonist’s wife, which draws heavily on a similar episode from the Ramayana epic, both in Valmiki’s classical Sanskrit version and in Kampan’s twelfth-century Tamil retelling. This article sheds new light on the ways in which classical literary gender roles and gender models were reimagined in premodern south India. I argue that the re-articulation of the epic fire-ordeal in the Pururava-caritai is a critical reflection on the feminine model that the Ramayana heroine, Sita, represents. I show that, through a synthesis of classical and folk motifs, the author has created an implicit intertextual dialogue that concludes with a complex matrix of values of ‘proper’ femininity and ‘true’ divinity.

Gender in Literature. Woman's Position from traditional to modern society

The remarkable influence of gender studies in recent years on the Greek educational system has inevitably led to the integration of a multi-focal thematic section entitled “Gender in Literature” in the new Lyceum curriculum. This section truly captures the interest of adolescents, as it stimulates the approach of literary texts and promotes constructive discussions that often lead to further enjoyment of reading. On this base a collaboration between University of Athens and Anavryta Model Lyceum was carried out in Literature class in both institutions. This article aims to present the main stages of this cooperation on the subject of “Literary Representations of Women’s roles from traditional to modern society”, as the institutional framework for teaching literature clearly supports the historicity of texts. Besides explaining the rationale behind this educational action, we are proposing a selection of literary texts that were used in class and presenting the objectives and didactic methods practiced, the type of tasks assigned to the pupils as well as the skills developed by them. The paper insists on certain texts that are particularly valuable for this approach and offers examples of taking advantage of contextual elements. Finally, we are showing how this collaboration became a real example of extroversion for both institutions and we are attempting a comprehensive evaluation of this project and its impact within the students’ and teachers’ community.

Confesar lo que no se sabe. Jacques Derrida y las políticas de la confesión

El propósito del presente estudio consiste en abordar el carácter político del género literario de la confesión a partir de la obra de Jacques Derrida. El interés de esta cuestión radica en que, lejos de hallar en la confesión un dispositivo biopolítico de subjetivación, como hiciera clásicamente Michel Foucault, Derrida encuentra en el género un ejercicio de deconstrucción de la soberanía del sujeto y una destitución de la idea misma de género. Ello implica un desplazamiento de la confesión de su dimensión epistemológica –conocimiento y (auto)vigilancia del sujeto- a su dimensión práctica para valorarla como lenguaje performativo. De esta forma, Derrida ofrece un desarrollo insólito de la teoría de los actos del habla, donde la performatividad se caracteriza no por ser una actividad del lenguaje, sino una pasividad; no por constituir un sujeto a través del lenguaje, sino por alterarlo mediante la palabra, destituirlo. Ello implica, de un lado, que uno confiesa algo que no sabe; y, de otro, que la confesión es un dispositivo textual que contamina a cualquier discurso: todo texto es una confesión. Esta posición supondrá una reconsideración de la figura del autor y de la distinción vida-escritura en la que esta clásicamente se sustenta.

María Zambrano y los géneros literarios: una lectura para el presente

El presente artículo pretende llevar a cabo una reflexión sobre la noción de género literario en la filósofa María Zambrano. En concreto, sobre la implicación que tiene su comprensión de los géneros en su propio pensamiento y, en consecuencia, en nuestro presente. Así pues, se llevará a cabo un análisis de dicha noción, atendiendo a su posible origen en José Ortega y Gasset, maestro de Zambrano, y a sus rasgos más característicos.

Deconstructing the Boundaries: Gender and Genre in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark

ABSTRACTIn her 1796 travelogue, Wollstonecraft combines the main elements of many different genres, blending together the physical-geographical account of the countries she was visiting with her own feelings, producing a Romantic conception of the human being overwhelmed by and subsumed into the natural elements. The journey through the Scandinavian countries turns out to be more than a business travel. It takes the shape of an inner route, a rediscovery of herself and of her experiences, including motherhood. The ability to dismantle the boundaries of the travel writing genre in such an innovative way is the same ability she shows when subverting the literary gender stereotypes that saw women marginalized inside the domestic sphere. What emerges from this extraordinary epistolary collection is a woman capable of the greatest sentimentality and, at the same time, of the smartest rationality, an active woman who does not deny her femininity but who strongly refuses the passivity society has always attributed to the female.

O ciałach, które się stają. Feminizm materialny w literaturze dla dzieci i młodzieży

W artykule recenzyjnym omówiono monografię Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children’s and Adolescent Literature [Feminizmy XXI wieku w literaturze dziecięcej i młodzieżowej] (2018) autorstwa Roberty Seelinger Trites. Jego celem jest nakreślenie znaczenia tzw. zwrotu materialnego w teorii feministycznej dla badań nad płcią społeczno-kulturową w literaturze dla młodych odbiorców. Artykuł rozpoczyna się od przybliżenia sylwetki Trites i jej poprzednich prac. W kolejnej części przedstawione zostają różne sposoby teoretycznego ujmowania ciała w myśli feministycznej. Przywołanie stanowisk zajmowanych przez Susan Bordo, Judith Butler czy Elizabeth Grosz pomaga stworzyć odpowiednie tło dla podstawowych założeń feminizmu materialnego i teorii Karen Barad. Sproblematyzowanie kwestii ucieleśnionej podmiotowości kobiecej pozwala zarazem wykazać, w jaki sposób zastosowanie przez Trites feminizmu materialnego do badań nad literaturą dziecięcą i młodzieżową wyznacza nowe kierunki analizy i interpretacji. W dalszej części artykułu zostają omówione poszczególne rozdziały książki, w których Trites włącza do dyskusji perspektywy kluczowe dla współczesnych feminizmów, w tym m.in. teorię krytyczną rasy, ekokrytykę, teorię queer oraz studia nad niepełnosprawnością.

The New Woman: Literary Modernism Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory by Emma Heaney

Reviewed by: The New Woman: Literary Modernism Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory by Emma Heaney Casey Lawrence (bio) THE NEW WOMAN: LITERARY MODERNISM, QUEER THEORY, AND THE TRANS FEMININE ALLEGORY, by Emma Heaney. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2017. xvii + 345 pp. $99.95 cloth, $39.95 paper. Emma Heaney's The New Woman is a rigorously intellectual text that isolates and hones the concept of the "trans feminine allegory," a figure who emerges out of the sexology, psychoanalysis, and feminism of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Heaney's central argument is that, through "the medical conceit of the woman trapped in a male body," twentieth-century sexologists reduced the plurality of trans feminine experiences into the "single entrapped figure that novelists and theorists then installed in fictional and theoretical narratives about gender, desire, and historical change" (5). The New Woman incorporates a straightforward parsing of trans feminine life-writing and literary modernism (Aldous Huxley's Farcical History of Richard Greenow, James Joyce's Ulysses, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and several texts by Djuna Barnes, including Nightwood1) alongside lucid historical analysis to demonstrate how the narrative of the "woman trapped in a man's body" came to be and came to stand in for a variety of trans feminine experiences (5). Heaney bookends her robust text with the example of trans activist Janet Mock, whose 2014 television interview with Piers Morgan acts as a poignant reminder of the real-world implications and ramifications of the work at hand. In her preface, Heaney introduces the four assumptions that underlay Morgan's frustratingly ignorant interview: 1) that "[t]rans feminine existence is new," 2) that "[t]rans women must present their credentials before cis people to be assessed for authenticity," 3) that "[a]ll individual trans women feel exactly the same way about their bodies," and 4) that "[t]rans feminine experience is ultimately impossible to understand" (xvi, xvi, xvi, xvii). The book expertly debunks each of these assumptions, first by tracing the origins of the trans feminine allegory to sexology and literary modernism, then by demonstrating the plurality of trans femininity, and finally by proposing a methodology, materialist trans feminism, with which to analyze gender in literature and theory. Heaney returns to Mock in the book's final pages to discuss her memoir, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More,2 using materialist trans feminism, which engages with the material conditions of living as a woman in a misogynist society. Between these bookends, the study is composed of two divergent sections. Part I focuses on the early twentieth century and the conditions through which "transatlantic Modernism … concretized the figural status of trans femininity at a moment when the feminist woman and the effeminate homosexual became emblems of the historical [End Page 463] forces that provoked a profound reorganization of the understanding of [sexual categories]" (6), whereas part II confronts some of the seminal texts of queer theory, which Heaney argues "revived and reinforced the figural assumption of the trans feminine allegory that the Modernists innovated during the period in which trans life was medicalized" (6). There are points at which these two sections seem disjointed, as if from altogether different books, although each makes an important contribution to the scholarship on the medicalized trans feminine figure in literature. The book's final two chapters may very well become required reading for students of queer theory and would certainly not feel out of place in the curriculum of any university course with a focus on modernism, gender studies, or queer theory. In them, Heaney neatly dissects the fundamental texts of queer theory by such theorists as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Lee Edelman to reveal their blind spots when it comes to the trans feminine, a "theoretical impasse" dating back to the 1970s that either installs trans femininity "as a figure for the breakdown of sex" or ignores it altogether (205).3 It is Heaney's literary analysis, however, which will likely draw readers from the pool of scholars and admirers of literary modernism. Joyceans will find Heaney's study of Ulysses refreshingly inventive, eschewing long-held traditions in...

An Update on Hispania's Upcoming Portuguese Special Issue

An Update on Hispania's Upcoming Portuguese Special Issue Benjamin Fraser, Editor of Hispania At the Modern Language Association meeting in January 2018, I was an Associate Editor of Hispania attending a session dedicated to the theme of "Brazilian Insecurity." The slate of speakers for this session, which included Professors Marguerite Harrison, Leila Lehnen, and Luiz Valente, delivered insightful comments concerning a range of topics crucial for the futures of Portuguese and Brazilian studies in the United States. As part of the discussion that followed, I remember asking whether there were ways that Hispania could help with the visibility of research into Portuguese language, literature and culture. Later, after I was fortunate enough to be selected as Editor of Hispania, that MLA event and its discussions continued to resonate with me. The fortuitous result has been the launch of a call for a Portuguese Special Issue that is now well underway. In due course, Leila Lehnen (Brown University) was selected as the lead guest editor for a special issue whose theme would be general. In our discussions, Leila and I both agreed it would be important to bring on board a larger team of guest co-editors, and soon the names of three others accompanied the official call for papers: Orlando R. Kelm (University of Texas, Austin), Kathryn M. Sanchez (University of Wisconsin), and Claire Williams (University of Oxford). That call for papers was circulated in fall 2018, and outlined a multistage process. Abstracts of 150–200 words would be submitted by March 15, 2019, and full articles, if requested, would be due October 20, 2019, with the published issue following as soon after that as the peer-review process and production limitations would permit. I am happy to report that we received 88 abstract submissions by the March 15 deadline. If we had been able to extend the deadline further, I have no doubt that more abstracts would have continued to stream in, yet, unfortunately, I felt it was necessary to enforce the original deadline that was circulated. Certainly the robust response from authors of abstracts should be regarded as a testament to the disciplinary commitment and reach of the special section's guest editors. In addition, it is a reminder that we are on the right track in reasserting the idea that Hispania is a venue deeply committed to publishing scholarship in Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian studies. Readers of the journal should keep in mind, of course, that this upcoming special issue is certainly not the only place in our catalogue to look for such scholarship. Based on mutual agreement reached during the abstract stage, special care was taken to ensure that the team of guest editors were accessing solely the abstracts and working bibliographies requested in the call. The preliminary vetting process was thus anonymized. While the full peer review process for the special issue will be underway in the fall 2019, I am confident at this time that the end result will include a range of innovative and forward-thinking pieces. Stay tuned for more information. We are also pleased to be announcing that Leila Lehnen has accepted the position of Associate Editor on the editorial board of Hispania! She holds a PhD from Vanderbilt University, an MA degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington Seattle, and a BA from Eberhardts-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany. Currently she is the chair of the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University, and she has been a past President of the American Portuguese Studies Association (2016–18). This appointment to Hispania's editorial [End Page 305] board that will help to ensure that our journal continues as a rigorous, high-quality venue for published research exploring the language, literature and culture of the broader Lusophone world. With this issue of Hispania we continue to move the short-form article initiative forward with two contributions. Our first short-form article is "Tisbea, la construcción de género, y la justicia social en el aula de literatura," authored by Paola Baglietto Jacquemin. This essay's focus on gender in literature of the Golden Age is sure to be relevant for high school instructors of...

Desire and Rape in the Feminine: The Tales of Echo and Salmacis: An Ovidian Answer to Propertius 1.20?

Desire and Rape in the Feminine:The Tales of Echo and Salmacis: An Ovidian Answer to Propertius 1.20? Jacqueline Fabre-Serris (bio) In this paper I offer a comprehensive study of two stories told in Ovid's Metamorphoses 3 and 4, each about the meeting between a boy (Narcissus/Hermaphroditus) and a nymph (Echo/Salmacis), consumed with desire at first glance. In both passages Ovid uses a narrative pattern recurring in many erotic tales of the Metamorphoses with male and female protagonists: the sudden sight of an erotically attractive young individual, followed by violent desire, declaration of love in vain, and attempted rape. Since the 1964 study of Hugh Parry,1 violence and rape2 in Ovid's Metamorphoses have received serious scholarly attention. In the United States there is an ongoing debate on whether and how it is even possible to teach Ovid today, since his vivid depictions of rape and sexual assaults may be offensive for some students.3 Although I will not discuss this particular issue, it seems important to keep in mind that Ovid is the ancient author most interested in examining erotic feelings and sexual situations from a female perspective. In my opinion, the two passages I compare typify Ovid's personal, authorial choice to empathize with women's point of view and behavior by giving literary space to a female voice.4 I would argue that Ovid has derived the idea of constructing two parallel stories about erotically desirous nymphs, Echo and Salmacis, from Propertius 1.20. In this text Propertius provides the exemplum of mythical Hylas's rape to support advice given to his friend, Gallus, about Gallus's beloved, also named Hylas: huic … / nympharum semper cupidas defende rapinas (Ward off from him the ever lustful abductions by nymphs, 7.11). In both narratives, Ovid refers, through a wide range of textual echoes, to various passages from Propertius 1.20. Propertius is only interested in the masculine point of view. He describes in detail the sexual advances of Boreas's sons, Hylas's fascination for his own image seen in the water, and Hercules' despair after Hylas's abduction. Only at the end, and very briefly, does Propertius mention the kidnapping of the boy by the lustful [End Page 127] Mysian nymphs.5 Unlike Propertius, Ovid focuses on the nympharum cupidas rapinas by describing how both women, although very different—one a nymph possessing extremely limited speaking capability, the other of some eloquence—fall in love at first sight, try to seduce the boy they desire by looking for an opportunity to be successful, attempt to kiss him despite his resistance, and, in the case of one of the women, to have sex with him. I. Echo and Salmacis: Two Unexpected or Exemplary Cases? Echo and Salmacis do not comply with the traditional picture of the 'nymph.' Both behave in ways that defy Roman literary gender stereotypes. Echo is said to have kept Juno away from other nymphs, when they were making love with Jupiter, by speaking for a long time with the goddess, and displaying considerable skill (longo prudens sermone, Met. 3.364). As Ovid points out (cum deprendere posset / sub Iove saepe suo nymphas in monte iacentis [while she (Juno) could have caught the nymphs often lying under her Jupiter in the mountain, 3.362–363]), Echo was trying to help not Jupiter but her fellow nymphs so that they might enjoy their sexual encounters without being disturbed or punished—apparently because they were her friends. Such friends make it usually easy for their friends to have erotic encounters with their beloved. Catullus attests that Allius did the same for him when Allius enabled him and Lesbia to be together in a safe place (68.41–44, 67–69). However, such behavior was not expected from a Roman woman, who was supposed to consider pudor (sexual reserve), both her own and that of other women, as a priority. Salmacis does not enjoy what the other nymphs like to do, namely, hunt with Diana. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid has multiplied the stories in which young girls, mortals or nymphs, eager to preserve their virginity, choose to live in the woods and...