Intertextuality and the female voice after the Heroides

Recent criticism of Ovid's Heroides has tried to attend properly to the female voices within the work. Effrosini Spentzou, in particular, has proposed a ‘lecture féminine’ that recognizes intertextuality as a male network working at the expense of women's expression. This essay explores the interaction of female speakers and intertextuality in early modern post‐Ovidian writing (by Donne, and Beaumont and Fletcher, with some reference to Shakespeare). In particular, it suggests ways in which literary women appear to find ways of making intertextuality serve their interests.