scholarly journals Woman-character and woman-author in ancient Greek and Roman literature: an attempt at the typology

2021 ◽  
Vol IX(253) (45) ◽  
pp. 20-24
Author(s):  
O. Halchuk
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Literary Discourse ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Female Images ◽  
Woman Character ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Woman Author

The article proposes a typology of female characters of ancient literature. The typology is based on the dominant categories of «moral» (expressed by the dichotomy of «moral – immoral»), «heroic» («achievement – offence») and «aesthetic» («beautiful – ugly»). Through the prism of mythology, the semantics of the figurative gallery «woman-character» and «woman-author» reflects the specifics of the position of women in the ancient world. Misogyny is typical for the male world of antiquity. This determined the emphasis in the interpretation of women's masks, which were mainly given the role of the object of erotic posing. This, however, does not diminish the reception potential of female images of ancient origin in the subsequent world literary discourse.

Anachronism as a Form of Metalepsis in Ancient Greek Literature

Metalepsis ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Peter Bing
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Audience Response ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Knight's Tale ◽  
Ancient Greek Literature

This chapter discusses anachronism as a form of metalepsis and different ways of understanding anachronism in the ancient and modern worlds. The chapter begins by highlighting potential complexities in applying Genette’s model of metalepsis to ancient literature, drawing out the differences between the case of a character about to murder a reader in Cortázar’s ‘Continuity of Parks’ (discussed by Genette) and that of a character, Helen, blinding and then healing an author in Stesichorus’ Palinode. It then turns to anachronism, a phenomenon which renders synchronous things that, from a historical/chronological perspective, do not belong to a shared temporal plane, and can thus be understood as metaleptic when the time periods involved are ‘the world in which one tells’ (the present) and ‘the world of which one tells’ (often, in the ancient world, the remote heroic past). The chapter moves from a modern instance which highlights anachronism’s pointedly transgressive potential (the use of 1970s music in Brian Helgeland’s 1370s-set movie, A Knight’s Tale) to the dominant ancient discourse about anachronism, according to which most anachronism is inadvertent and the critic’s job is to correct it. But the chapter argues that despite this, ancient sources such as Plato’s Symposium do recognize a more artful use of anachronism and potential modes of audience response to it, and concludes by asking what a pointedly erudite astronomical anachronism in a poem of Theocritus tells us about the audience envisaged by its author.

A glimpse from the ancient world: What a gold necklace from Tillya-tepe reveals about opium in Afghanistan

Afghanistan ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-173
Author(s):  
Sara Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Opium Poppy ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Cultural Importance ◽  
Large Seed ◽  
Potent Drug ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Societal Role

Among the six excavated burials at Tillya-tepe, in northern Afghanistan, was one occupied by an elite woman wearing a substantial necklace consisting of large gold beads shaped as seed-heads. The scale and fine workmanship of this necklace suggest that it was one of her most important possessions. It can be demonstrated that these large seed-heads are representations of poppy capsules, whose significance lies in the fact that they are the source of the potent drug opium. This necklace is the most outstanding object within a group of items decorated with poppy imagery, all of which were discovered in female burials. The opium poppy has long been a culturally important plant, and the implication of this identification is investigated in several contexts. Firstly, the proliferation of poppy imagery in the female burials at Tillya-tepe is examined, and then there is a discussion of material evidence for opium among relevant peoples along the Eurasian steppes. The particular cultural importance of opium is reviewed, leading finally to a proposal for the societal role of these women.

Disruptions of the Local, Eruptions of the Feminine: Local Reportage and National Anxieties in Egypt’s 1890s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Booth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Images ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Advocacy Role ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
Gendered Expectations

This chapter demonstrates that inscriptions of female images in Cairo’s late nineteenth-century nationalist press were part of a discursive economy shaping debates on how gender roles and gendered expectations should shift as Egyptians struggled for independence. The chapter investigates content and placement of ‘news from the street’ in al-Mu’ayyad in the 1890s, examining how these terse local reports – equivalent to faits divers in the French press – contributed to the construction of an ideal national political trajectory with representations of women serving as the primary example in shaping a politics of newspaper intervention on the national scene. In this, an emerging advocacy role of newspaper correspondents makes the newspaper a mediator in the construction of activist reader-citizens.

From Performance to Casket Copy

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Cordell M. Waldron
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Standard Of Comparison

Does the central role of the Iliad and the Odyssey in ancient Greek culture indicate that they functioned as scripture? Taking the role of the Tanakh in Jewish culture as the standard of comparison, this essay argues that, while the Tanakh and the epics functioned similarly as foundational texts in their respective cultures, the ways in which Homer was used in Hellenic culture differ markedly from the ways in which the Tanakh was used in ancient Jewish culture. The Homeric epics were primarily thought of as orally delivered or performed events throughout most of their history, only coming to be thought of as primarily written texts in the Hellenistic era and later, whereas almost from its origins the Tanakh commands and exemplifies a textcentered community in which that which is written is most important.

THE FEATURES OF FEMALE IMAGES IN THE TRAGEDIES OF GUSEYN JAVID

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 180-188
Author(s):  
Malika Adigezalova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Characters ◽  
Female Images ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Given

The article is devoted to the features of female types in the tragedies of one of significant playwrights of the XX century Guseyn Javid. In the given article, they analyse and compare the characteristic features and behavior of the female figures of the author’s such literaryworks as «Mother»(Selma, Ismet), «Maral»(Maral, Humay), «Afet»(Afet, Alagoz), «Siyavush»(Farangiz, Sudaba). The basis of the article lies in the creative works of G.Javid, where special attention is attracted by several types of female characters, among which the types of a traditional eastern woman are most brightly represented

Levantine Art in the “Orientalizing” Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 369-383
Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
First Millennium

The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the existing scholarly narratives. The Orientalizing period should be understood as a construct of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship that was structured around a false dichotomy between the Orient (the East) and the West. The designation “Phoenician” has a similarly complex historiographic past rooted in ancient Greek stereotyping that has profoundly shaped modern scholarly interpretations. This chapter argues that the luxury arts most often credited as agents of Orientalization—most prominent among them being carved ivories, decorated metal bowls, and engraved tridacna shells—cannot be exclusively associated with a Phoenician cultural origin, thus calling into question the primacy of the Phoenicians in Orientalizing processes. Each of these types of objects appears to have a much broader production sphere than is indicated by the attribute as Phoenician. In addition, the notion of unidirectional influences flowing from east to west is challenged, and instead concepts of connectivity and networking are proposed as more useful frameworks for approaching the problem of cultural relations during the early part of the first millennium bce.

scholarly journals Modeling Syntactic Change under Contact: The Case of Italiot Greek

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Cristina Guardiano ◽  
Melita Stavrou
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Potential Source ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Structures

In this paper, we investigate patterns of persistence and change affecting the syntax of nominal structures in Italiot Greek in comparison to Modern (and Ancient) Greek, and we explore the role of Southern Italo-Romance as a potential source of interference. Our aim is to highlight the dynamics that favor syntactic contact in this domain: we provide an overview of the social context where these dynamics have taken place and of the linguistic structures involved.

scholarly journals Hermēneis in the Documentary Record from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt: interpreters, translators and mediators in a bilingual society

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-102
Author(s):  
Rachel Mairs
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Roman Egypt ◽  
Monastic Communities

AbstractEgypt of the Hellenistic and Roman periods remains the most thoroughly documented multilingual society in the ancient world, because of the wealth of texts preserved on papyrus in Egyptian, Greek, Latin and other languages. This makes the scarcity of interpreters in the papyrological record all the more curious. This study reviews all instances in the papyri of individuals referred to as hermēneus in Greek, or references to the process of translation/interpreting. It discusses the terminological ambiguity of hermēneus, which can also mean a commercial mediator; the position of language mediators in legal cases in Egyptian, Greek and Latin; the role of gender in language mediation; and concludes with a survey of interpreting in Egyptian monastic communities in Late Antiquity.

scholarly journals Bloody Women: How Female Authors Have Transformed the Scottish Contemporary Crime Fiction Genre

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-71
Author(s):  
Lorna Hill
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
Changing Attitudes

Abstract This study will explore the role of female authors in contemporary Scottish crime fiction. Over the past thirty years, women writers have overhauled the traditionally male dominated genre of crime fiction by writing about strong female characters who drive the plot and solve the crimes. Authors including Val McDermid, Denise Mina and Lin Anderson are just a few of the women who have challenged the expectation of gender and genre. By setting their novels in contemporary society they reflect a range of social and political issues through the lens of a female protagonist. By closely examining the female characters, both journalists, in Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series and Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series, I wish to explore the issue of gender through these writers’ perspectives. This essay documents the influence of these writers on my own practice-based research which involves writing a crime novel set in a post referendum Scotland. I examine a progressive and contemporary Scottish society, where women hold many senior positions in public life, and investigate whether this has an effect on the outcome of crimes. Through this narrative, my main character will focus on the current and largely hidden crimes of human trafficking and domestic abuse. By doing this I examine the ways in which the modern crime novel has evolved to cross genre boundaries. In addition to focusing on a crime, the victims and witnesses, today’s crime novels are tackling social issues to reflect society’s changing attitudes and values.

scholarly journals The female characters in Branislav Nušić's and Stefan Kostov's selected comedies

Bastina ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
Đurđina Isić
Keyword(s):  
Small Town ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Bereaved Family

The paper presents the results of research that included comparative study of the place and role of female characters in selected and representative comedies by Serbian comedigrapher Branislav Nušić (eng. MP, Suspicious person, Mrs Minister, Bereaved family, Dr, Deceased; srb. Narodni poslanik, Sumnjivo lice, Ožalošćena porodica, Dr, Pokojnik, Vlast) and Bulgarian comedigrapher Stefan Kostov (eng. Gold mine, Golemanov, Grasshoppers, Nameless comedy; blg. Zlamnama mina, Golemanov, Skakalci, Komediâ bez ime) in order to find similarities and differences in the process of comedigraphic shaping of female characters in the work of these two authors. The subject of the research was viewed primarily from a literary-theoretical point of view, and the dominant methods of study were comparative and analytical-synthetic. During the research, there was a differentiation of female characters in accordance with their motivational structures, psychological assemblies and the nature of the place and the role they play in the social environment in which they are located. Therefore, we can distinguish female characters who live in the province and who are fully representative of the small-town spirit, female characters who live in the capital and are a symbol of the modern age and female characters who dwell in the capital, but in fact, deeply down still carry a small-town view of the world. The structure of this paper is in line with this distinction. Conclusions made at the end of the study show that the representation of female characters in analyzed comedies of both comedigaphers is highly similar in its nature.

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