Enacting the Law
Plautus' Use of the Divorce Formula on Stage
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3937145 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patricia A Rosenmeyer (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1995 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 201 |
| Publication date | 1995-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Phoenix (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1192521 |
| OpenAlex | W2323574416 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 21 |
This paper explores the dramatic context of references to divorce in three Plautine comedies: the Amphitruo, Casina, and Trinummus. I will suggest that for Plautus, the mimetic construct of the stage alone was not enough of a barrier to disrupt or cancel the legal implications of the divorce formula, a phrase which actually enacted the law at the moment of its utterance. Although my argument necessarily entails a consideration of the legal and social conventions of divorce in the late third and early second century B.C. at Rome, my goal here is primarily literary rather than historical, linguistic rather than legal. It is Plautus' presentation of language in the theater, specifically the formulaic language used to dissolve a marriage, that will be the subject of the following pages
Political science · Sociology · Stage (stratigraphy · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Geology · Historical and Literary Studies · Law · Psychology
Introduction
Music and Metre
Roman Comedy and the Poetics of Adaptation
Slaves and Roman Comedy
Fathers and Sons
Gods and Roman Comedy
Stage Action in Roman Comedy
Roman Comedy in Early Modern Italy and France
The Language of Roman Comedy
Roman Comedy in Germany (from Humanism to Lessing)
Roman Comedy on Stage and Screen in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Metatheatre
Roman Comedy in Early Modern England
Comic Technique
The Manuscripts and Illustration of Plautus and Terence
Mothers and Whores
The Politics of Roman Comedy
Vxores dotatae entre a ira e o medo
The Cambridge Companion to Roman Comedy
Law and Love in Ovid
You Must Change Your Life”
| Citations per year | 1.62 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2024 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |