コース情報

This course introduces the issues of gender and sexuality in a wide range of Latin texts dating from archaic Latin to the period of the Late Empire. We will focus on contrastive perceptions of women and men in literature and art, ideals of femininity and masculinity, boundaries of gender, moral norms, theories about the female and male bodies, and views on marriage, but also on adultery as well as on prostitution, and rape. We will also examine the relation between literature and everyday life in Ancient Rome – what is to be deduced from literature about the actual gender roles in ancient society, the roles women and men were expected to play (but in literature often refuse to play) within household, family, and state, and the evolution of these roles over time.