Sauer, Jochen
30.06.2024
Sauer, Jochen (2024): Ovid in Boston 1773. Das Niobe-Epyllion der ersten afro-amerikanischen Schriftstellerin Phillis Wheatley. Ars docendi, 19, giugno 2024.
Sauer (didactic specialist in ancient languages at Bielefeld University) shows that Phillis Wheatley's adaptation of Ovid gives students the opportunity to work out how a black slave in North America on the eve of the Wars of Independence and in the context of a Christian neo classical educational culture retells and interprets Ovid's Niobe story in the Metamorphoses. Against this backdrop, they also recognise how the ancient myth can possibly be used in a politically subversive way to criticise the existing order. At the same time, they develop a deeper understanding of the Ovidian Niobe narrative through comparative textual work. The article contains reflections that have already been published in Sauer 2023.
Sauer (didactic specialist in ancient languages at Bielefeld University) shows that Phillis Wheatley's adaptation of Ovid gives students the opportunity to work out how a black slave in North America on the eve of the Wars of Independence and in the context of a Christian neo classical educational culture retells and interprets Ovid's Niobe story in the Metamorphoses. Against this backdrop, they also recognise how the ancient myth can possibly be used in a politically subversive way to criticise the existing order. At the same time, they develop a deeper understanding of the Ovidian Niobe narrative through comparative textual work. The article contains reflections that have already been published in Sauer 2023.
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