Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic
Antony Augoustakis
Abstract
While interest in the poets of the Flavian period has been steadily growing, the role of women in the epic poems of Silius Italicus and Statius has so far remained understudied. This book offers the studies of the role of motherhood and female foreign otherness in the Punica and the Thebaid. The book argues that the juxtaposition of Roman and foreign women as mothers expands our awareness of the poems' scope in relation to gender and ethnicity. By drawing on the theoretical apparatus of Julia Kristeva on motherhood and otherness, the book shows how the Flavian poets construct an idealized disc ... More
While interest in the poets of the Flavian period has been steadily growing, the role of women in the epic poems of Silius Italicus and Statius has so far remained understudied. This book offers the studies of the role of motherhood and female foreign otherness in the Punica and the Thebaid. The book argues that the juxtaposition of Roman and foreign women as mothers expands our awareness of the poems' scope in relation to gender and ethnicity. By drawing on the theoretical apparatus of Julia Kristeva on motherhood and otherness, the book shows how the Flavian poets construct an idealized discourse on the empire's own identity that at once crystallizes but also destabilizes the role that women command within the epic genre. The portrayal of female figures in the epics of the first century ce allows us to witness a change of attitudes toward otherness: the periphery now defines the centre, as the poets highlight the notions of otherness and motherhood in the narrative in order to reshape Romanness through representations of the other.
Keywords:
Silius Italicus,
Punica,
Statius,
Thebaid,
Julia Kristeva,
motherhood,
otherness,
romanness,
centre,
periphery
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199584413 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2010 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584413.001.0001 |
