Χὠς ἴδον, ὣς ἐμάνην. Space, Desire and the Female Gaze in Hellenistic Poetry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21819397 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Evina Sistakou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 124-143 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Trends in Classics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1866-7473 • E-ISSN: 1866-7481 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/tc-2024-0005 |
| OpenAlex | W4400693373 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 25 |
This paper studies the female gaze at the intersection of space, genre and gender in three Hellenistic poets who have explored the female viewpoint in their works, namely Apollonius of Rhodes, Theocritus and Herodas. The female gaze covers all the stages of desire from erotic fantasy to sexual fulfillment, and is contingent on both aesthetic factors and the sociocultural background of gender roles. It reflects the power dynamics between male and female and also becomes a means of subverting male authority by the gazing female. In Hellenistic poetry, the various degrees of female liberation through the control of the gaze vary depending on the spaces occupied by women. I argue that women, initially confined in the oikos according to the conventions of epic poetry, are represented as being gradually liberated in natural and urban spaces, the emblematic spaces of the neoteric genres of the bucolic idyll and the mime; this shift in gender dynamics is conveyed through the illustration of the female gaze in distinct genres of poetry and their respective symbolic spaces, namely the house, the natural landscape, and the city
Aesthetics · Art · Gaze · Linguistics · Literature · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |