Roman Sexualities / / ed. by Marilyn B. Skinner, Judith P. Hallett.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• MitwirkendeR: Corbeill, Anthony,; Edwards, Catharine,; Fredrick, David,; Gordon, Pamela,; Hallett, Judith P.,; Joshel, Sandra R.,; Keith, Alison,; Oliensis, Ellen,; Parker, Holt N.,; Richlin, Amy,; Skinner, Marilyn B.,; Walters, Jonathan,
• HerausgeberIn: Hallett, Judith P.,; Skinner, Marilyn B.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2021]; ©1998
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (368 p.) :; 1 table

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION. Quod multofit aliter in Graecia . . . -- PART ONE: UNMARKED SEXUALITY -- ONE. Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought -- PART TWO: WAYWARD SEXUALITIES -- TWO. The Teratogenic Grid -- THREE. Unspeakable Professions: Public Performance and Prostitution in Ancient Rome -- PART THREE: GENDER SLIPPAGE IN LITERARY CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE MASCULINE -- FOUR. Dining Deviants in Roman Political Invective -- FIVE. Ego mulier. The Construction of Male Sexuality in Catullus -- SIX. The Erotics of amicitia: Readings in Tibullus, Propertius, and Horace -- SEVEN. Reading Broken Skin: Violence in Roman Elegy -- PART FOUR: MALE CONSTRUCTIONS OF "WOMAN" -- EIGHT. Pliny's Brassiere -- NINE. Female Desire and the Discourse of Empire: Tacitus's Messalina -- TEN. Female Homoeroticism and the Denial of Roman Reality in Latin Literature -- ELEVEN. The Lover's Voice in Heroides 15: Or, Why Is Sappho a Man? -- PART FIVE: FEMALE CONSTRUCTION OF THE DESIRING SUBJECT -- TWELVE. Tandem venit amor: A Roman Woman Speaks of Love -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX