This article explores the power of silence in the feminist recovery of classical
women and texts to open up engaged spaces for women’s creative reworkings, taking as a
case study Lavinia and her reception in Ursula Le Guin’s 2008 novel of the same name.
By re-evaluating silence in dialogue with feminist scholarship, I argue that Le ...
This article explores the power of silence in the feminist recovery of classical
women and texts to open up engaged spaces for women’s creative reworkings, taking as a
case study Lavinia and her reception in Ursula Le Guin’s 2008 novel of the same name.
By re-evaluating silence in dialogue with feminist scholarship, I argue that Le Guin is able
to bring a different angle to the reception of classical literary women, focusing on the gaps
and spaces in Lavinia’s character that provide a medium for engagement with the Vergilian
text. The open, interpretative space of silence thus becomes a locus in which Le Guin can
transform Vergil’s passive personification of Lavinia into a generative vision of literature
and reception — so that, ultimately, Lavinia is able to absorb and embody the poem within
herself.