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Greek Women’s Lives & Voices
An Introduction
5/22/2017
1
Quotes and response…
“The highest praise you can win is to be
spoken of by men as little as possible, whether
for good or ill.”
(Thucydides, Periclean Funeral Oration)
“Silence is the adornment of women.”
(Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics)
“It is perhaps not that surprising that Athenian
women … were meant to be neither seen nor
heard. Maybe all these authors wrote so rarely
of women because they never saw them come
out of [the] ‘attic.’ ”
(student)
Responses…



valued virtues
 quietism
stay out of way
 contrasts with today
praise as silence
 reward silence – men
create silence-value
 advertising



5/22/2017
1st quote – not to be spoken a
good sign
 doing what supposed to
be
praise as silence
 male moral code
privileged and
suppressed
 attention itself as
problematic
honor/praise
 most important, to bear a
son
 procreation: military,
inheritance
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Agenda

Writer’s Corner


Recap and Update


Research, Citation, Honesty
Background — Geographical, Historical,
Theoretical, Social
Women’s Voices/“Voices”

5/22/2017
Sappho and Alcman
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Writer’s Corner
Research, Citation, Honesty
5/22/2017
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What’s wrong with…
hyperlink…
[Prior to revision, following passage guilty of plagiarism. After
revision, follows reqs. of MLA citation.]
According to Dover, there are “two passages of Aristophanes
[that] introduce us to a phenomenon of Greek life which
expressed and sustained the homosexual ethos” (111).
Works Cited
Dover, K. J. Greek Homosexuality. 2 ed. Cambridge, Mass.,
1989.
Recap and Update
Background — Geographical,
Historical, Theoretical, Social
5/22/2017
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Geography
Sappho of Lesbos,
500s BCE
Greece (northern)
Greece (southern)
Athens
Alcman of Sparta,
600s BCE
Island of Crete
(Dorians, as at Sparta)
Historical Review
ca. 1900-1100 BCE
Greek Bronze Age
“Heroic” age, prehistoric
ca. 1100-800
Iron Age
“Dark Ages,” still prehistoric
ca. 800-490
Archaic period
Aristocratic culture, politics
490-323
Classical Period
Democracy at Athens
322-39
Hellenistic Period
Great kingdoms
5/22/2017
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Gender & Ideology

Ideology


Gender


“Imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of
existence” (Althusser)
Social/cultural expectations/associations relative to
(abstracted from) biological sex (5-Feb PowerPoint)
Gender as ideology (Rabinowitz)


5/22/2017
The “imaginary relation of the individual's sex to his/her real
conditions of experience,”
i.e.,
“Transcribing the biologically male and female into the socially
masculine and feminine” (from Anxiety Veiled)
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Social history (Paul-Zinserling)…
Background: Social History

status

political





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role (eleuthera politis)

politis
metoikos, xene
eleuthera
doule
hetaira
porne
domestic

gamos


legal (kurieia)
socio-economic

5/22/2017



enguesis
ekdosis
sunoikismos
public (religious)


Thesmophoria
Dionysia

sequestration?
 Spartan women?
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Women’s Voices/“Voices”
Sappho and Alcman
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from Alcman Partheneion
Compare/contrast desire in…
• Alcman
• Sappho
• Plato/Socrates/Diotima
• others?
Sappho poem 1