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This collection of essays seeks to establish Roman constructions of sexuality and gender difference as a distinct area of research, complementing work already done on Greece to give a fuller picture of ancient sexuality. By applying feminist critical tools to forms of public discourse, including literature, history, law, medicine, and political oratory, the essays explore the hierarchy of power reflected so strongly in most Roman sexual relations, where noblemen acted as the penetrators and women, boys, and slaves the penetrated. In many cases, the authors show how these roles could be inverted--in ways that revealed citizens' anxieties during the days of the early Empire, when traditional power structures seemed threatened.
In the essays, Jonathan Walters defines the impenetrable male body as the ideational norm; Holt Parker and Catharine Edwards treat literary and legal models of male sexual deviance; Anthony Corbeill unpacks political charges of immoral behavior at banquets, while Marilyn B. Skinner, Ellen Oliensis, and David Fredrick trace linkages between social status and the gender role of the male speaker in Roman lyric and elegy; Amy Richlin interrogates popular medical belief about the female body; Sandra R. Joshel examines the semiotics of empire underlying the historiographic portrayal of the empress Messalina; Judith P. Hallett and Pamela Gordon critique Roman caricatures of the woman-desiring woman; and Alison Keith discovers subversive allusions to the tragedy of Dido in the elegist Sulpicia's self-depiction as a woman in love.
List of contents
| Acknowledgments | |
| Introduction: Quod multo fit aliter in Graecia ... | 3 |
| Pt. 1 | Unmarked Sexuality | |
| 1 | Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought | 29 |
| Pt. 2 | Wayward Sexualities | |
| 2 | The Teratogenic Grid | 47 |
| 3 | Unspeakable Professions: Public Performance and Prostitution in Ancient Rome | 66 |
| Pt. 3 | Gender Slippage in Literary Constructions of the Masculine | |
| 4 | Dining Deviants in Roman Political Invective | 99 |
| 5 | Ego mulier: The Construction of Male Sexuality in Catullus | 129 |
| 6 | The Erotics of amicitia: Readings in Tibullus, Propertius, and Horace | 151 |
| 7 | Reading Broken Skin: Violence in Roman Elegy | 172 |
| Pt. 4 | Male Constructions of "Woman" | |
| 8 | Pliny's Brassiere | 197 |
| 9 | Female Desire and the Discourse of Empire: Tacitus's Messalina | 221 |
| 10 | Female Homoeroticism and the Denial of Roman Reality in Latin Literature | 255 |
| 11 | The Lover's Voice in Heroides 15: Or, Wy Is Sappho a Man? | 274 |
| Pt. 5 | Female Construction of the Desiring Subject | |
| 12 | Tandem venit amor: A Roman Woman Speaks of Love | 295 |
| Bibliography | 311 |
| Notes on Contributors | 333 |
| Index | 335 |
About the author
Edited by Judith P. Hallett & Marilyn B. Skinner
Summary
This collection of essays seeks to establish Roman constructions of sexuality and gender difference as a distinct area of research, complementing work already done on Greece to give a fuller picture of ancient sexuality. By applying feminist critical tools to forms of public discourse, including literature, history, law, medicine, and political oratory, the essays explore the hierarchy of power reflected so strongly in most Roman sexual relations, where noblemen acted as the penetrators and women, boys, and slaves the penetrated. In many cases, the authors show how these roles could be inverted--in ways that revealed citizens' anxieties during the days of the early Empire, when traditional power structures seemed threatened.
In the essays, Jonathan Walters defines the impenetrable male body as the ideational norm; Holt Parker and Catharine Edwards treat literary and legal models of male sexual deviance; Anthony Corbeill unpacks political charges of immoral behavior at banquets, while Marilyn B. Skinner, Ellen Oliensis, and David Fredrick trace linkages between social status and the gender role of the male speaker in Roman lyric and elegy; Amy Richlin interrogates popular medical belief about the female body; Sandra R. Joshel examines the semiotics of empire underlying the historiographic portrayal of the empress Messalina; Judith P. Hallett and Pamela Gordon critique Roman caricatures of the woman-desiring woman; and Alison Keith discovers subversive allusions to the tragedy of Dido in the elegist Sulpicia's self-depiction as a woman in love.
Additional text
"Roman Sexualities makes a major contribution to our understanding of the construction of sexuality in Roman society and culture as it moves beyond the more traditional forms of historical and literary scholarship to create illuminating perspectives on the subject in all its multifaceted complexity."
