‘The New Mythological Image of Ovidian Myrrha in William Barksted’s Myrrha, The Mother of Adonis: Or, Lustes Prodigies (1607)’

This talk will be given by Moore Visiting Fellow Dr Agnès Lafont (University Paul Valery – Montpellier 3, France)

Abstract: William Barksted in Myrrha, The Mother of Adonis: Or, Lustes Prodigie (1607) uses  the classical story of Myrrha (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10) in similar and divergent ways to create an erotic epyllion. This early modern adaptation of the Ovidian story offers a case point of the re-reading of the classical tradition of daughter-father incest to see whether there are no enjoyable feelings attached to this destructive erotic pulsion and how the moral reading of the fable can be subverted to titillate an early modern male reader. Barksted clearly knew his Ovid and the stock moralisations inherited from the Ovid Moralisé tradition and he uses them to probe erotic psyche. By tapping into subterraneuous connections, the Myrrha story mirrors and decontracts desire and lust while simultaneously redefining the process of mythopoetics in the early modern genre of erotic narratives.