Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy: On Echoes and Voices (Oxford Studies in Classical Literature and Gender Theory)

As literature written in Latin has almost no female authors, we are dependent on male writers for some understanding of the way women would have spoken. Plautus (3rd to 2nd century BCE) and Terence (2nd century BCE) consistently write particular linguistic features into the lines spoken by their female characters: endearments, soft speech, and incoherent focus on numerous small problems. Dorota M. Dutsch describes the construction of this feminine idiom and asks whether it should be considered as evidence of how Roman women actually spoke. "Ancient scholiasts and modern scholars have long been aware of a specialized feminine vocabulary (terms of endearment, a special word for 'please', and interjections) used by the authors of Roman comedy. Dorota M. Dutsch investigates the cultural implications of these linguistic choices. Lexical mannerisms, it emerges, are only one manifestation of a larger tendency to portray women as disregarding interpersonal boundaries and moral principles in their attitudes towards others and themselves. Yet comedy also employs allegedly feminine features of speech as a means of undermining masculine identities and creating ambiguous figures, such as that of the comic lover. Conversely, masculine points of view are often grafted onto the speech of comedic women. Most comedic roles thus represent both the dominant cultural discourse (male) and the voices this discourse attempts to exclude (female). The tension between these voices, which constitutes an implicit theme in the first half of Dutsch's study, takes centre stage in the second half. This part of the book explores the interface between the feminine discourse of Roman comedy and other ancient perceptions concerning gender and speech. Contemporary Roman notions of gender and boundaries, and Plautus' use of bacchanalia as a metaphor for acting, are first brought into focus. The narrative then moves away from Plautus and Terence, to examine Greek and Roman assumptions about identity and language, and eventually proposes that the Platonic concept of the chora is a particularly useful lens for examining the feminine in Roman comedy."--Jacket Contents......Page 12 Abbreviations......Page 13 1. Introduction: Reading towards the Other......Page 16 2. Plautus’ Pharmacy......Page 64 3. Of Pain and Laughter......Page 107 4. (Wo)men of Bacchus......Page 164 5. Father Tongue, Mother Tongue: The Back-Story and the Forth-Story......Page 202 Epilogue......Page 243 Bibliography......Page 247 B......Page 273 D......Page 274 G......Page 275 L......Page 276 M......Page 277 P......Page 278 T......Page 281 W......Page 282 Index locorum......Page 283 Dorota M. Dutsch examines the linguistic features of the lines that the Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence attribute to their female characters, and asks whether their construction of a feminine idiom should be considered as evidence of how Roman women actually spoke