Breaking Bodies: Materiality and Vulnerability in Heroides 12

Abstract

This paper presents a queer and trans intersectional feminist interpretation of Ovid’s Heroides 12, centering on lines 119–26. It argues that this passage contains a queer imagining of a degendered and dehierarchized togetherness for Medea and Jason, accessible only through accepting the material vulnerabilities of the body, that ultimately challenges normative temporal assumptions including what consti­tutes a desirable or successful future. By focusing on this passage as a lens through which to interpret the rest of the poem, this reading highlights the queer potential in more hopeful and charitable moments of the letter, while acknowl­edging the enmity expressed, to paint a more complex and ambivalent portrait of Medea.