Gender and Communication in Euripides' Plays

Between Song and Silence
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-90-04-16880-0
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 296, 270 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

Reihe: Mnemosyne, Supplements

The prominent role of women in Greek drama has always fascinated readers. This book proposes that women in Euripides’ plays communicate in ways constructed by the tragic genre itself as ‘female.’ Yet these women’s words are surprisingly not uniformly dangerous or excessively emotional, as has traditionally been thought. Rather, Euripides’ women resort to ‘female’ ways of talking in order to enable others to understand them and their unique point-of-view. Aspects of women’s speech—song, silence and secret-keeping as female verbal genres, and the challenges of speaking out of place—contribute to Euripides’ portrayal of women as different from men. Originating in a culture where putting women under scrutiny was part of daily life, Euripides’ tragedies dramatise women’s constant struggle to control language.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chong-Gossard, J H Kim On

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike

Über Autor(innen)

J. H. Kim On Chong-Gossard, Ph.D. (1999) in Classical Philology, University of Michigan, is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Research interests include gender in Greek tragedy, and Roman sexual scandals in Suetonius’ biographies.