PREFACE
Traditional literature remembers Dido primarily through the frame imposed upon her—destiny, betrayal, tragedy, erotic passion, lament. Even when she is given a voice, as in Ovid, that voice remains subordinated to the larger literary drama. Dean’s project is different: he wants to tell what Dido herself feels when she is in love. He remembers her as a consciousness still burning inside an ecstatic dream of unearthly love—the same perfume-drenched, gaze-centred, rapturous experience that defines his Medea.
In short, Dean does not simply rewrite the plot of Dido’s life. He relocates her centre of gravity from epic, politics and tragedy to the private, sensory and metaphysical experience of having once been given heaven by a pair of eyes—and of remaining within that eternity even among the shades. His radical claim is that this interior experience, rather than the external tragedy imposed upon her, is the real story of Dido.

The traditional writers tell us what happened to Dido and Medea. Dean wants to tell us what it was like to be Dido and Medea while they were in love.