Playing the Man: Performing Masculinities in the Ancient Greek Novel
Meriel Jones
Abstract
Despite the growth of research on masculinity both in Gender Studies and in Classical Studies, and the resurgence of interest in ancient fiction, no volume has yet been devoted to exploring the representation of masculinity in the Greek novels. This book examines three key discourses of ancient Greek masculinity (paideia, andreia, and sexual ideology) evidenced in the five so-called ‘ideal’ Greek novels (those of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, and Heliodorus). Jones argues that while some of the narratives may be set in the classical past, the masculine concerns they d ... More
Despite the growth of research on masculinity both in Gender Studies and in Classical Studies, and the resurgence of interest in ancient fiction, no volume has yet been devoted to exploring the representation of masculinity in the Greek novels. This book examines three key discourses of ancient Greek masculinity (paideia, andreia, and sexual ideology) evidenced in the five so-called ‘ideal’ Greek novels (those of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, and Heliodorus). Jones argues that while some of the narratives may be set in the classical past, the masculine concerns they display are inescapably symptomatic of the imperial present, and that their male protagonists should therefore be viewed as reflecting some of the ‘gender troubles’ of the real worlds of their authors. Using modern theories of the ‘performance’ of gender as tools for analysis, the study finds that many of the novels’ men betray an awareness that their masculine identities depend very much on the maintenance of their image before others – they are conscious of ‘playing the man’. The book also puts forward the hypothesis that, while most of the authors uphold accepted scripts of masculinity, Achilles Tatius constructs Cleitophon as a ‘misperformer’ of masculinity, as a means of challenging and subverting traditional codes of gender.
Keywords:
masculinity,
performance of gender,
paideia. andreia,
sexual ideology,
image,
masculine script,
playing the man,
gender subversion
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199570089 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570089.001.0001 |
