The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens

This book explores the relationship between the prostitute, the wife, and the ritual performer in Athenian literature.

Kate Gilhuly (Author)

9781107404977, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 July 2012

222 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.33 kg

"Gilhuly has written an admirable study of the interplay between the three female roles of prostitute, the wife, and the ritual agent in late fifth and fourth-century Athenian literature." --BMCR

In The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens, Kate Gilhuly explores the relationship between the prostitute, the wife, and the ritual performer in Athenian literature. She suggests that these three roles formed a symbolic continuum that served as an alternative to a binary conception of gender in classical Athens and provided a framework for assessing both masculine and feminine civic behaviour. Grounded in close readings of four texts, 'Against Neaira', Plato's Symposium, Xenophon's Symposium, and Aristophanes' Lysistrata, this book draws upon observations from gender studies and the history of sexuality in ancient Greece to illuminate the relevance of these representations of women to civic behaviour, pederasty, philosophy, and politics. In these original readings, Gilhuly casts a new light on the complexity of the classical Athenian sex/gender system, demonstrating how various and even opposing strategies worked together to articulate different facets of the Athenian subject.

1. Introduction
2. Collapsing order: typologies of women in the speech against Neaira
3. Why is Diotima a priestess?: the feminine continuum in Plato's Symposium
4. Bringing the polis home: private performance and the civic gaze in Xenophon's Symposium
5. Sex and sacrifice in Aristophanes' Lysistrata
6. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]