Research Expertise and Interest

Latin Literature, psychoanalysis, literary form

Research Description

Ellen Oliensis is a literary critic whose work centers on Latin poetry. Her scholarship is especially influenced by psychoanalysis, which she takes up chiefly as a mode of reading attentive to strains and defects in the textual surface. For the past decade her scholarship has revolved around Ovid. Her latest book, a study of Ovid’s Amores, focuses on the intertwining of the poet’s erotic and writerly impulses. She is currently working on a commentary on Book 6 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and on a set of essays on the comedies of Plautus.