Title: Citizen Bacchae : women's ritual practice in ancient Greece /
Authors: Goff, Barbara E.
Publisher: University of California Press,
Year: 2004
Subjects: Greek literature History and criticism; Rites and ceremonies in literature.; Religion and literature Greece.; Women Religious life Greece.; Women and literature Greece.; Rites and ceremonies Greece; Religion in literature.; Women in literature; Women Greece.
Abstract: "This study aims to recover and reconstruct an important dimension of the lived experience of ancient Greek women. An investigation of the ritual roles of women in ancient Greece, it draws on a wide range of evidence from across the Greek world, including literary and historical texts, inscriptions, and vase-paintings, to assemble a portrait of women as religious and cultural agents, despite the ideals of seclusion within the home and exclusion from public arenas that we know restricted their lives." "As she builds a picture of the extent and diversity of women's ritual activity, Barbara Goff shows that they were entrusted with some of the most important processes by which the community guaranteed its welfare. She examines the ways in which women's ritual activity addressed issues of sexuality and civic participation, showing that ritual could offer women genuinely alternative roles and identities even while it worked to produce wives and mothers who functioned well in this male-dominated society. Moving to more speculative analysis, she discusses the possibility of a women's subculture focused on ritual and investigates the significance of ritual in women's poetry and vase-paintings that depict women. She also includes a substantial exploration of the representation of women as ritual agents in fifth-century Athenian drama."--Jacket.
Contents: Working toward a material presence -- Ritual management of desire : the reproduction of sexuality -- In and out of the city: imaginary citizens -- Representing women : ritual as a cultural resource -- Women represented: ritual in drama.