The Literate woman in the Roman World
| dc.contributor.author | Tkach, Darca Joyce | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-08-15T20:09:33Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-08-15T20:09:33Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 1998 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 1998 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Greek and Roman Studies | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts M.A. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | The object of this thesis is to explore the role of literacy in the lives of women in the Roman world during the central period of Roman history. A variety of evidence from ancient literacy, visual, and documentary sources is brought together in order to examine how women acquired and applied the skills of reading and writing in domestic, cultural and legal contexts, the different forms and levels of literacy available to them, and the social attitudes expressed towards literate women. Chapter One establishes a context for this study by reviewing recent scholarship on ancient literacy and women's studies. It begins by comparing different approaches to the subject of literacy the problem of defining such a flexible concept, the need to examine not only applications of literacy but also related attitudes and customs, and the effect of the very limited dissemination of reading and writing skills in antiquity. Modern trends in the study of ancient women, relating to the recovery of details of women's lives and contributions within the private sphere of the family and Roman society in general, as well as the construction of gender roles, are also considered. Although it is probably that only a minority of women in ancient Rome were literate, the social factors associated with this phenomenon have rarely been analyzed in depth. Chapter Two explores the evidence from literature. Although most of the extant literary and historical text were male-authored and reflect the perspective of the most highly educated class of men, some information can be extracted concerning the educational opportunities for girls, and the cultural, professional and domestic activities which literate women might undertake. Also considered are the conventional and conflicting images of literate women which appear in a variety of literary genres, reflecting approbation or censure the image of the literate and dutiful mother, wife or daughter who assumes the traditional values of the Roman woman is most admired, while educated women who step outside these roles are alternately praised in love poetry or mocked in satire for their intellectual pretensions or immoral conduct. The fact that women's education and literary culture were based upon the same doctrina as that of men may have been a cause of anxiety to men who dislike the idea of women transgressing a traditionally male sphere of influence. Chapter Three focuses on artistic representations of women with the iconography of literacy book-rolls, writing tablets, and other writing implements. These images were primarily designed as private portraits in houses or on funerary monuments. A brief history of the motif of the literate woman in the art of earlier periods precedes a discussion of representative images from the Roman world, which are collected together in a catalogue which follows the chapter. Women and girls can be portrayed alone or alongside men in "intellectual" scenes, however, artistic conventions might subtly dictate an unequal power relationship in the later case, when women are most often presented in a subordinate role not quite equal to that of men, perhaps reflecting patriarchal norms. However, the fact that both men and women are depicted, either individually or as couples, as participating in literary culture in the idealized contexts of decorative and commemorative art indicates that intellectual abilities were admired as distinctive markers of education and status. Chapter Four considers the direct testimony for women's literacy which emerges from a study of documentary texts from Oxyrhynchus in Roman Egypt and Vindolanda in Roman Britain, two extreme and unassuming locations of papyrological finds. Although only a small percentage of women actually appended autograph evidence of their writing abilities to legal and personal documents, emphasizing that education was usually a privilege of the elite, the mass of texts m which women made use of writing through the ubiquitous intermediaries of scribes clearly implies that many more women recognized the use of written documents as integral and practical tools in their lives. The conclusion ts reached in Chapter Five that although only a minority of women are represented as literate m the ancient source material, for this select group literacy was a source of prestige and pride as well as a practical commodity. The acquisition of the skills of reading and writing was a potentially leveling technology which brought women into a sphere dominated, and jealously preserved, by men, but where women could advance their own social, cultural, and legal interests. | |
| dc.format.extent | 147 pages | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/19920 | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | en_US |
| dc.title | The Literate woman in the Roman World | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
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