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Love and Marriage?. Pseudo-Demosthenes’ Against Neaera. Agenda. Academic Honesty Angelique Jenks-Brown, BU Libraries Butler or Foucault? Women’s eros in Sappho fr. 31 Athenian Women A Quote Dissected… Apollodorus’ Against Neaera Charges, Ideologies, Rhetoric, Realities
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Love and Marriage? Pseudo-Demosthenes’ Against Neaera
Agenda • Academic Honesty • Angelique Jenks-Brown, BU Libraries • Butler or Foucault? • Women’s eros in Sappho fr. 31 • Athenian Women • A Quote Dissected… • Apollodorus’ Against Neaera • Charges, Ideologies, Rhetoric, Realities • Will the Real Neaera Please Stand up? Against Neaera
Butler or Foucault? Women’s erosin Sappho fr. 31
Butler or Foucault? The man seems to me strong as a god, the man who sits across from you and listens to your sweet talk nearby and your lovely laughter — which, when I hear it, strikes fear in the heart in my breast. For whenever I glance at you, it seems that I can say nothing at all but my tongue is broken in silence, and that instant a light fire rushes beneath my skin, I can no longer see anything in my eyes and my ears are thundering, and cold sweat pours down me, and shuddering grasps me all over, and I am greener than grass, and I seem to myself to be little short of death But all is endurable, since even a poor man ... (Sappho fr. 31)
“Sexual-Social Isomorphism” aka “asymmetry hypothesis”
Butler on Social Construction • “To publish one’s act in language is in some sense the completion of the act” (Butler AC) • "... gender [but maybe sexuality too?] is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script … requires individual actors” (“Performative Acts,” in Performing Feminisms 1990) http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/genderandsex/modules/butlerperformativity.html Against Neaera
Discussion Butler? Foucault? f’s asymmetry man and strength sappho exhibits passivity poem a speech restricted by dichotomy laid out by fouc, thereby confining her sex etc. in the fictive reality self-control • sappho seems to be performing feminine gender • the how of her reactions seeming performed • anti-butler • s born that way Against Neaera
BiblioNote: Theory Butler, Judith. Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life & Death. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Print. ---. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Thinking Gender. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. ---. The Judith Butler Reader. Ed. Sara Salih. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print. Felluga, Dino. Introduction to Theories of Gender and Sex. Purdue University. 2 October 2013 (2002): Web site. <http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/genderandsex/> Foxhall, Lin. “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality.” Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity. Eds. David H. J. Larmour, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. 122–37. Print. Against Neaera
BiblioNote: Women, Neaera Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. ---. Women in Classical Athens. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1998. Cohen, David. Law, Sexuality and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Hamel, Debra. Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan’s Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003 Against Neaera
BiblioNote: Gender (& masculinity) Bassi, Karen. Acting like Men: Gender, Drama, and Nostalgia in Ancient Greece. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Print. Foxhall, Lin. Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity. Key Themes in Ancient History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Print. Foxhall, Lin and J. B. Salmon, eds. When Men were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical Antiquity. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Print. Against Neaera
Athenian Women A Quote Dissected…
“We [Athenian men] have prostitutes for the sake of pleasure, concubines for meeting our bodily needs day-to-day, but wives for having legitimate children”(Against Neaera p. 191)
Do They “Jive”? • “We [Athenian men] have prostitutes (hetairai) for the sake of pleasure, concubines (pallakai) for meeting our bodily needs day-to-day, but wives (gunaikes) for having legitimate children” (Against Neaera p. 191) • “This Candaules, then, fell in love with (erasthe) his own wife, so much so that he believed her to be by far the most beautiful woman in the world; and believing this, he praised her beauty beyond measure to Gyges son of Dascylus” (Herodotus 1.8) • “Niceratus too, so I am told, is in love with (erai) his wife and finds his love reciprocated (she anterai him)” (Xenophon Symposium 8.3) Against Neaera
Apollodorus’ Against Neaera Charges, Ideologies, Rhetoric, Realities
Bread-making, phallus-bird, c. 500 BCE. Athenian Charges, Ideologies, Rhetoric • Fraudulent… • citizen-marriage • citizen-offspring • Impiety • Cheapened enfranchisement • Jury shaming Against Neaera
Realities: Athenian Wives et al. • Marriage • Adultery (moikheia) • Divorce • Seclusion? • ideology v. actuality • oikia, andronitis, gunaikonitis • Guardianship • kurios and oikos • court representation • Property • dowry • inheritance • epikleros, ankhisteia Against Neaera
Realities: Prostitutes, Concubines • Hetaira (plur. hetairai) • expense • relationship • Porne (plur. pornai) • publicity • commodification • Pallake (plur. pallakai) • “kept” slave woman Old man & hetaira. Athenian, c.500-490 (Inscription reads Panaitios kalos, “Panaetius” [man’s name] is beautiful.”) Against Neaera
Will the Real Neaera Please Stand up? Whore? Courtesan? Concubine? Wife?
“We [Athenian men] have prostitutes for the sake of pleasure, concubines for meeting our bodily needs day-to-day, but wives for having legitimate children”(Against Neaera p. 191) Was Neaera a… - porne? - - hetaira? - - pallake? - - citizen wife? -
Discussion Against Neaera