Women in Roman Republican Drama

by Dorota Dutsch (Editor), Sharon L. James (Editor), David Konstan (Editor)

Overview

Latin plays were written for audiences whose gender perspectives and expectations were shaped by life in Rome, and the crowds watching the plays included both female citizens and female slaves. Relationships between men and women, ideas of masculinity and femininity, the stock characters of dowered wife and of prostitute-all of these are frequently staged in Roman tragedies and comedies. This is the first book to confront directly the role of women in Roman Republican plays of all genres, as well as to examine the role of gender in the influence of this tradition on later dramatists from Shakespeare to Sondheim.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299303143
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	04/27/2015
Series:	Wisconsin Studies in Classics
Edition description:	1
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dorota Dutsch is an associate professor of classics at University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy. Sharon L. James is an associate professor of classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author of Learned Girls and Male Persuasion, she also has a YouTube channel (Sharon James) of scenes from Roman dramas. David Konstan is a professor of classics at New York University and the author of many books, including Roman Comedy and Greek Comedy and Ideology.

Table of Contents

Introduction               
            Dorota Dutsch, Sharon L. James, and David Konstan
 
Part One: Females in Performance
Feats of Flesh: The Female Body on the Plautine Stage                   
            Dorota Dutsch
Slave-Woman Drag                
            Amy Richlin
Music and Gender in Terence's Hecyra                     
            Timothy J. Moore
 
Part Two: Women in Roman Drama and Society
Women in Control                 
            Elaine Fantham
Mater, Oratio, Filia: Listening to Mothers in Roman Comedy                    
            Sharon L. James
The Many Shapes of Sisterhood in Roman Comedy            
            Anne Feltovich
Roman Women in the Fabula Togata            
            Jarrett Welsh
Haut facul . . . femina una invenitur bona? Representations of Women in Republican Tragedy                  
            Gesine Manuwald
 
Part Three: Receptions
Machiavelli's Mandragola and the Logic of Seduction                      
            Valeria Cinaglia and David Konstan
Shakespeare and the Roman Comic Meretrix            
            Ariana Traill
Juno's Triumph in Antônio José da Silva's Anfitrião ou Júpiter e Alcmena              
            Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves
 
Contributors              
Index

Editorial Reviews

"An indispensable resource for students of Roman drama and also important for those in theater and drama and women's studies. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above."--Choice

"An outstanding collection of essays, illuminating how female slaves and citizens were centre stage in Roman Republican drama, and it will serve as an invaluable resource for students and teachers of Roman drama."--The Classical Review

"This is an important and much-needed study that weaves together new trends in understanding gender roles in Roman Republican drama. It offers new theoretical insights for performance and theater studies and presents an impressive spectrum of topics that will guide any scholar and student of Roman theater and anyone interested in the literary representations and lives of women in antiquity."--Andromache Karanika, University of California, Irvine

From the Publisher