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Cargando... The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquitypor Kate Cooper
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. The Virgin and the Bride reassesses a series of literary sources, both pagan and Christian, to see how a change in dominant modes of authority (from civic to religious) and the rise of asceticism in late antiquity changed representations of femaleness, virginity, and marriage. Cooper argues that we should read texts about virgins, and especially virgin martyrs, in Late Antiquity less as arguments about virginity than as discussions of authority, with male writers appropriating the female body as a rhetorical tool. It's an interesting thesis, one which offers some interesting new ways of looking at the surviving sources, and I appreciated the reminder that the Christian texts which have come down to us are not necessarily representative of the mainstream of Late Antique Christian opinion. However, as a whole the book just clunked for me—Cooper's prose never rises above the serviceable—and she definitely seems more a literary scholar than a historian. I felt at times that she was constructing her argument within a sort of generic 'Rome' than within specific contexts—would this hold true in third century Rome? fourth century Carthage? sixth century Constantinople?—more a theoretical work than a historical one. ( ) sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
During the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the prevailing ideal of feminine virtue was radically transformed: the pure but fertile heroines of Greek and Roman romance were replaced by a Christian heroine who ardently refused the marriage bed. How this new concept and figure of purity is connected with--indeed, how it abetted--social and religious change is the subject of Kate Cooper's lively book. The Romans saw marital concord as a symbol of social unity--one that was important to maintaining the vigor and political harmony of the empire itself. This is nowhere more clear than in the ancient novel, where the mutual desire of hero and heroine is directed toward marriage and social renewal. But early Christian romance subverted the main outline of the story: now the heroine abandons her marriage partner for an otherworldly union with a Christian holy man. Cooper traces the reception of this new ascetic literature across the Roman world. How did the ruling classes respond to the Christian claim to moral superiority, represented by the new ideal of sexual purity? How did women themselves react to the challenge to their traditional role as matrons and matriarchs? In addressing these questions, Cooper gives us a vivid picture of dramatically changing ideas about sexuality, family, and morality--a cultural revolution with far-reaching implications for religion and politics, women and men. The Virgin and the Bride offers a new look at central aspects of the Christianization of the Roman world, and an engaging discussion of the rhetoric of gender and the social meaning of idealized womanhood. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)870.9Literature Latin Latin literature History and criticism of Latin literatureClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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