Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic (Oxford Studies in Classical Literature and Gender Theory)

This is the first book-length study to reconstruct the role of women in the epic poems of the Flavian period of Latin literature. Antony Augoustakis examines the role of female characters from the perspective of Julia Kristeva's theories on foreign otherness and motherhood to underscore the on-going negotiation between same and other in the Roman literary imagination as a telling reflection on the construction of Roman identity and of gender and cultural hierarchies. Contents......Page 8 List of Illustrations......Page 10 Preface......Page 11 Texts and Translations Used......Page 14 List of Abbreviations......Page 15 (Fe)Male perspectives on cosmopolitanism and identity......Page 16 Motherhood and the Other defined: Julia Kristeva in the chôra of Strangers......Page 29 Epic within epic: Lemnos and Theban civil war in Statius’ Thebaid......Page 36 Patrio-tic epic? Same and other in Silius’ Punica......Page 38 1 Mourning Endless: Female Otherness in Statius’ Thebaid......Page 45 Defining the periphery: Thebes and Lemnos......Page 49 Between Lemnos and Argos: Hypsipyle’s transgressed boundaries......Page 52 Eumenidum antiquissima: Jocasta the warmonger or helpless bystander?......Page 77 In the chôra of sisterhood: Antigone and Ismene—public gaze and private lament......Page 83 Lament and the poet: Boundaries (re)transgressed......Page 90 2 Defining the Other: From altera patria to tellus mater in Silius Italicus’ Punica......Page 107 Fathers, sons, and the poetics of patria......Page 112 Capua: Another Rome? A city in the periphery......Page 124 Saguntum as same and other: Breaking the bond with patria Rome......Page 128 Germana Elissae: A Carthaginian reborn......Page 151 The renewal of tellus......Page 159 3 Comes ultima fati: Regulus’ Encounter with Marcia’s Otherness in Punica 6......Page 171 Regulus and the Punica: Bridging traditions?......Page 174 Literary convention or subversive speech?......Page 179 Lucan’s Marcia and the foreboding of doom......Page 182 Marcia’s Didoesque farewell—impenetrability wounded......Page 191 ‘Securing’ the future......Page 193 Transgressing against nature: The serpent and Virgil’s Camilla......Page 197 Fashioning a new generation: Marcia ‘sowing the seed’......Page 203 Li occhi casti di Marzia tua: Embedding Marcia in the Punica......Page 207 4 Playing the Same: Roman and Non-Roman Mothers in the Punica......Page 211 Edonis ut Pangaea: Imilce’s art of dissuasion......Page 213 Ne bella pavescas: Mothers as ‘educators’ and the regeneration of the female......Page 228 Tempus cognoscere manes femineos: The female chôra in the geography of the Underworld......Page 236 Caelicolum Phrygia genetricem sede: A foreign goddess in Rome......Page 244 Epilogue: Virgins and (M)others: Appropriations of Same and Other in Flavian Rome......Page 253 Bibliography......Page 269 Indices......Page 302 A......Page 315 B......Page 316 C......Page 317 D......Page 318 F......Page 319 H......Page 320 J......Page 321 M......Page 322 N......Page 323 P......Page 324 R......Page 325 S......Page 326 T......Page 327 V......Page 328 Z......Page 329 In this pioneering study, Antony Augoustakis reconstructs the role of women in the epic poems of the Flavian period of Latin literature, examining the role of female characters from the perspective of Julia Kristeva's theories on foreign otherness and motherhood