Making Silence Speak

by Lardinois, Andre; McClure, Laura

• ISBN13: 9780691004662
• ISBN10: 0691004668
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-05
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

This collection attempts to recover the voices of women in antiquity from a variety of perspectives: how they spoke, where they could be heard, and how their speech was adopted in literature and public discourse. Rather than confirming the old model of binary oppositions in which women's speech was viewed as insignificant and subordinate to male discourse, these essays reveal a dynamic and potentially explosive interrelation between women's speech and the realm of literary production, religion, and oratory. The contributors use a variety of methodologies to mine a diverse array of sources, from Homeric epic to fictional letters of the second sophistic period and from actual letters written by women in Hellenistic Egypt to the poetry of Sappho. Throughout, the term "voice" is used in its broadest definition. It includes not only the few remaining genuine women's voices but also the ways in which male authors render women's speech and the social assumptions such representations reflect and reinforce. These essays therefore explore how fictional female voices can serve to negotiate complex social, epistemological, and aesthetic issues. The contributors include Josine Blok, Raffaella Cribiore, Michael Gagarin, Mark Griffith, Andreacute; Lardinois, Richard Martin, Lisa Maurizio, Laura McClure, D. M. O'Higgins, Patricia Rosenmeyer, Marilyn Skinner, Eva Stehle, and Nancy Worman.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
List of Illustrations	xi
Note on Abbreviations, Texts, and Translations	xiii
Introduction	3	(14)
Laura McClure
PART ONE: THE ARCHAIC PERIOD	17	(76)
This Voice Which Is Not One: Helen's Verbal Guises in Homeric Epic	19	(19)
Nancy Worman
The Voice at the Center of the World: The Pythias' Ambiguity and Authority	38	(17)
Lisa Maurizio
Just Like a Woman: Enigmas of the Lyric Voice	55	(20)
Richard P. Martin
Keening Sappho: Female Speech Genres in Sappho's Poetry	75	(18)
Andre Lardinois
PART TWO: THE CLASSICAL PERIOD	93	(84)
Virtual Voices: Toward a Choreography of Women's Speech in Classical Athens	95	(22)
Josine H. Blok
Antigone and Her Sister(s): Embodying Women in Greek Tragedy	117	(20)
Mark Griffith
Women's Cultic Joking and Mockery: Some Perspectives	137	(24)
D. M. O'Higgins
Women's Voices in Attic Oratory	161	(16)
Michael Gagarin
PART THREE: THE LATE CLASSICAL PERIOD AND BEYOND	177	(84)
The Good Daughter: Mothers' Tutelage in Erinna's Distaff and Fourth-Century Epitaphs	179	(22)
Eva Stehle
Ladies' Day at the Art Institute: Theocritus, Herodas, and the Gendered Gaze	201	(22)
Marilyn B. Skinner
Windows on a Woman's World: Some Letters from Roman Egypt	223	(17)
Raffaella Cribiore
(In-) Versions of Pygmalion: The Statue Talks Back	240	(21)
Patricia A. Rosenmeyer
Bibliography	261	(28)
Contributors	289	(4)
Index	293