R.'s book is divided into an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a bibliography and an index locorum. The main chapters are devoted to Ovid's Heroides 16 and 17 (Chapter 1), Baudri of Bourgueil's poems 7 and 8 (Chapter 2) and Baudri's poems 200 and 201 (Chapter 3).
One of the main roles of myths in literature is said to be that they always convey to the reader / recipient an interpretation of accounts. Hence it is in this way that myths can be manipulated. The conquest of Troy (and the Trojan cycle, the relationship between Paris and Helen included) is one of the most frequently retold stories in the Middle Ages because it connects with the idea of translatio imperii (the founding of Rome legitimated from Troy) in the new States. The principal sources are Virgil, Ovid and Statius, the Ilias Latina and other authors and works from Late Antiquity or the Middle Ages, in Latin or French, such as the Roman de Troie, in which characters, situations, etc. are changed, modified or directly manipulated, as are the limits of literary genres.
In Chapter 1 R. analyses how the love affair between Paris and Helen was subjected to transformation from Greek sources to medieval works. Ovid plays down the myth by making appear on the scene Oenone, Paris and Helen, who offer their own interpretation of it. Ovid also plays with the limits of literary genres and compares the attitudes of Paris and Helen with those of Aeneas and Dido, as opposing characters. Epistle, elegy, bucolic and epic (even tragedy) come together in words and junctures (pedum pulsu) that go back to Ennius and Virgil, in spite of the fact that Ovid uses them in such a comic way that they will bring about war at the end. Intertextuality is underlined everywhere, because it is almost certainly the basis of the manipulation of myths. The summary and commentary of Her. 16 and 17 seem to have been designed to show the contrasts between characters and literary genres in order to make them as meaningful as possible. This is probably one of the most noteworthy strengths of the book. The same methodological path can be observed when R. analyses the character of Helen and compares her to Dido. Commentaries by R. then become more precise, as when she parses their verses and looks for changes of meaning in the words, depending on who is speaking, e.g. virtus, on the one hand, in a philosophical sense (17.98), and on the other hand, in the sense of ‘manliness’ (17.135), or the proverb in v. 139 proscidere litus aratro, also found in Her. 5 and previously in Virgil, Aen. 4. Ovid's use of cura is symptomatic of the author's method. Cura does not mean the same thing when used by Menelaus and when used by Helen. This simple example of a word commonly used with varying meaning when spoken by different characters serves as a methodological support for the aims of the book. Perhaps we miss here a similar commentary on fama (four times in the epistle), fama when used by Helen, but also fama when used by Dido. At any rate, changes in the use of literary genres and words are demonstrated to correlate with the manipulation of myth.
Chapter 2, a continuation of a previous work of R., and Chapter 3 proceed in the same way. The first deals with the letters of Paris and Helen again. The second deals with the supposed letters of Baudri and the nun Constantia. In these cases R. analyses and comments on the above-mentioned four poems of Baudri, taking the mythological work of Fulgentius as a background in a Christianising interpretation of the myth. Baudri wanted both to oppose any misinterpretation of pagan love poetry and to express the right way to explain the myths. This can be seen as a new example of the way in which medieval authors read ancient love, and mythological poetry in particular, so as to interpret and explain it. The success of R. here has been to find the keys that open Baudri's poems.
The only objection I can raise against R.'s interpretation has to do with the fact of Baudri's actual knowledge of the poems of Ovid themselves. It is well known that verses 39–144 of epistle 16 have only survived from the editio Parmensis of 1477 by Stephanus Corallus, and it remains unclear how Baudri, a poet of the Loire circle, could have had access to these verses. Fisher, Reeve, Goold and Tarrant, among other scholars, have expressed their doubts about the authenticity of these verses. Kenney, on the contrary, has defended them as Ovidian in a famous article which R. cites (p. 21 n. 26). R. also defends their authenticity on the basis of the fact that they are indispensable to the understanding of Helen's answers in epistle 17, but this does not imply previous knowledge of the verses in question. Probably the Western Middle Ages did not know verses 39–144 of epistle 16, nor verses 15–250 of epistle 21. Almost a century after Baudri, the famous Castilian king Alfonso X, the Wise, knew neither these verses, nor epistle 15 (Sappho to Phaon).
There is one erratum on p. 25, not Prodigium but Prodigiums.
These criticisms are not meant to detract from the value of this book. Moreover, R.'s clarity makes it a user-friendly book which can be read with pleasure.
