Gender and Communication in Euripides' Plays: Between Song and Silence, Vol. 296 »

J. H. Kim On Chong-Gossard, Ph.D. (1999) in Classical Philology, University of Michigan, is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Research interests include gender in Greek tragedy, and Roman sexual scandals in Suetonius’ biographies.

The prominent role of women in Greek drama has always fascinated readers. This book proposes that women in Euripides’ plays communicate in ways constructed by the tragic genre itself as ‘female.’ Yet these women’s words are surprisingly not uniformly dangerous or excessively emotional, as has traditionally been thought. Rather, Euripides’ women resort to ‘female’ ways of talking in order to enable others to understand them and their unique point-of-view. Aspects of women’s speech—song, silence and secret-keeping as female verbal genres, and the challenges of speaking out of place—contribute to Euripides’ portrayal of women as different from men. Originating in a culture where putting women under scrutiny was part of daily life, Euripides’ tragedies dramatise women’s constant struggle to control language.

Ch. 1 Introduction: Gendered Space in Greek Tragedy as Communication 1

Ch. 2 Song as Knowledge: Recognition Duets 25

Ch. 3 Why Am I Singing? Resistance and Other Semantics of Lyric 65

Ch. 4 Silence I: Gendered Categories 113

Ch. 5 Silence II: Solidarity and Complicity 155

Ch. 6 Women Out of Place 205

Ch. 7 Conclusions 241

Bibliography 247

Index Locorum 255

Index Nominum et Rerum 261