Empresses, Queens, and Letters: Finding a 'Female Voice' in Late Antiquity?
This article discusses twenty-six Latin and Greek letters dating to the fifth and sixth centuries CE, written under the name of empresses and queens and originating from the later Roman Empire, Ostrogothic Italy and Merovingian Gaul. Where these letters have received attention, scholars have usually...
| Publicado en: | Gender & History Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 353 - 383 |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Wiley-Blackwell
Jul2019
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=137749756&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 137749756 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09535233 BPJ jtl: Gender & History issn: 09535233 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jul2019 vid: 31 iid: 2 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 137749756 10.1111/1468-0424.12427 ppf: 353 ppct: 30 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 269KB tig: atl: Empresses, Queens, and Letters: Finding a 'Female Voice' in Late Antiquity? aug: au: Hillner, Julia su: Women's writings Queens Empresses Classical letter writing Greek letter writing Latin letter writing Fifth century, A.D. Sixth century sug: subj: Women's writings Queens Empresses Classical letter writing Greek letter writing Latin letter writing Fifth century, A.D. Sixth century ab: This article discusses twenty-six Latin and Greek letters dating to the fifth and sixth centuries CE, written under the name of empresses and queens and originating from the later Roman Empire, Ostrogothic Italy and Merovingian Gaul. Where these letters have received attention, scholars have usually approached them with the intention of analysing a single letter’s content for evidence of a specific woman’s biography. This article studies them as a corpus instead. Comparing them with the male letters most of them travelled with and using insights from linguistic research on gender-specific language in antiquity, the article argues that probably none of the letters expressed an individual woman's ‘authentic voice’. Written by the equivalent of modern speech-writers trained in adopting a female register, they are testimony to political strategies common to the late Roman and post-Roman world that used the female voice to publicly perform sentiments that male rulership on its own could not. They are therefore evidence for wider late antique trends towards male and female co-regency visible also in art and ceremony of the period. These female letters are a specific late antique art form, which nonetheless holds truths for all scholars of female writing in antiquity and the early Middle Ages. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Gender & History is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Gender & History holder: Wiley-Blackwell dt: @attributes: year: 2019 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|