Performance and gender in ancient Greece : nondramatic poetry in its setting / Eva Stehle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stehle, Eva, 1944- author.

Series:

Princeton legacy library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Greek poetry--History and criticism.

Greek poetry.

Oral interpretation of poetry--History--To 1500.

Oral interpretation of poetry.

Women in the performing arts--Greece.

Women in the performing arts.

Bards and bardism--History--To 1500.

Bards and bardism.

Women and literature--Greece.

Women and literature.

Oral tradition--Greece.

Oral tradition.

Sex role--Greece.

Sex role.

Greece--Social life and customs.

Greece.

Sappho--Friends and associates.

Sappho.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (384 pages).

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton Unviversity Press, [1997]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Like love, Greek poetry was not for hereafter," writes Eva Stehle, "but shared in the present mirth and laughter of festival, ceremony, and party." Describing how men and women, young and adult, sang or recited in public settings, Stehle treats poetry as an occasion for the performer's self-presentation. She discusses a wide range of pre-Hellenistic poetry, including Sappho's, compares how men and women speak about themselves, and constructs an innovative approach to performance that illuminates gender ideology. After considering the audience and the function of different modes of performance--community, bardic, and closed groups--Stehle explores this poetry as gendered speech, which interacts with performers' bodily presence to create social identities for the speakers. Texts for female choral performers reveal how women in public spoke in order to disavow the power of their speech and their sexual power. Male performers, however, could manipulate gender as an ideological system: they sometimes claimed female identity in addition to male, associated themselves with triumph over a defeated (mythical) female figure, or asserted their disconnection from women, thereby creating idealized social identities for themselves. A final chapter concentrates on the written poetry of Sappho, which borrows the communicative strategy of writing in order to create a fictional speaker distinct from the singer, a "Sappho" whom others could re-create in imagination.Originally published in 1997.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE. Community Poetry

CHAPTER TWO. Women in Performance in the Community

CHAPTER THREE. Male Performers in the Community

CHAPTER FOUR. Bardic Poetry

CHAPTER FIVE. The Symposium

CHAPTER SIX. Sappho's Circle

Conclusion

Appendix: Chronology of Primary Sources

Transliterated Terms

Bibliography

Index Locorum

General Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [331]-351) and indexes.

ISBN:

9780691602431

0691602433

9780691631912

0691631913

9781400864294

1400864291

OCLC:

889254730