'Fasti'
'Onos'
A01=Amy A. Koenig
Achilles Tatius
ancient Rome
Apuleis
Author_Amy A. Koenig
Category=DSBB
Category=NHDA
dea muta
disability
elite Roman society
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Galen
Imperial Rome
Longus
martyrdom
Metamorphosis
mute goddess
muteness
oratory
Ovid
pantomime
pantomimic voice
poetry
political power
rhetoric
Roman Empire
Roman females
Roman language
Roman literature
Roman males
Roman religion
Roman society
Second Sophistic
silence
social power
voice
voicelessness
Product details
- ISBN 9780299345303
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 09 Jan 2024
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Imperial Rome privileged the elite male citizen as one of sound mind and body, superior in all ways to women, noncitizens, and nonhumans. One of the markers of his superiority was the power of his voice, both literal (in terms of oratory and the legal capacity to represent himself and others) and metaphoric, as in the political power of having a “voice” in the public sphere. Muteness in ancient Roman society has thus long been understood as a deficiency, both physically and socially.
In this volume, Amy Koenig deftly confronts the trope of muteness in Imperial Roman literature, arguing that this understanding of silence is incomplete. By unpacking the motif of voicelessness across a wide range of written sources, she shows that the Roman perception of silence was more complicated than a simple binary and that elite male authors used muted or voiceless characters to interrogate the concept of voicelessness in ways that would be taboo in other contexts. Paradoxically, Koenig illustrates that silence could in fact be freeing—that the loss of voice permits an untethering from other social norms and expectations, thus allowing a freedom of expression denied to many of the voiced.
In this volume, Amy Koenig deftly confronts the trope of muteness in Imperial Roman literature, arguing that this understanding of silence is incomplete. By unpacking the motif of voicelessness across a wide range of written sources, she shows that the Roman perception of silence was more complicated than a simple binary and that elite male authors used muted or voiceless characters to interrogate the concept of voicelessness in ways that would be taboo in other contexts. Paradoxically, Koenig illustrates that silence could in fact be freeing—that the loss of voice permits an untethering from other social norms and expectations, thus allowing a freedom of expression denied to many of the voiced.
Amy A. Koenig is an assistant professor of classics at Hamilton College.
