Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

At the heart of the study of gender lies “social construction” – the idea that the capacities, expectations, and even the definitions of “men” and “women” are not derived from biology, but social practice. Given the foundational role of classical antiquity in formulating the distinctive “look and feel” of western European culture, it is understandable that the art, literature, and history of the Greco-Roman world was intimately involved in the articulation of normative definitions of masculinity and femininity.The study of gender is political. It invites us to question the effects of social institutions. In this respect, it is far from clear that the classical tradition is something worth celebrating. Western culture has shown itself remarkably sympathetic to the misogyny of antiquity. The traditional privileging of male activity and its anxieties about female power in Greece and Rome have regularly found an audience who have been only too keen to hear and repeat its phallocentric maxims. Significantly, it is often difficult to separate out cause and symptom in these manifestations of classical patriarchal ideology. As a consequence, analysis of the relationship between gender and the classical tradition raises a number of questions about the value of the latter in western culture. Is such male chauvinism the inescapable product of the classical tradition – the bitter pill that ... log in or subscribe to read full text