Discourses of Stability and Change: Communicating Gender in Ancient Greek Theatre

• In Event: Theatre Division Top Student Debut Papers

Abstract

The privileging of speech for men and the interdiction of nonreligious public speaking for women in classical Athens contrast with the featuring of vociferous female characters in classical Greek plays, suggesting dialectical tensions between the social and fictional spheres. This paper examines the dialectics, first by providing an overview and critique of existing feminist studies on the classical Greek theatre, then by proposing an alternative feminist taxonomy of ways of communicating gender in Greek theatre.

Authors

• Diana Nastasia, University of North Dakota

• Sorin Nastasia, University of North Dakota