Search results for "historical anthropology of ancient Greece"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Il Dioniso delle "Baccanti" e i "piegatori di pini". Polivalenza di un'immagine leggendaria
2021
This paper investigates the mythical and ritual background of Dionysus’ representation as “fir-bender” in Euripides’ "Bacchae" (ll. 1061 ff.), in an attempt to shed light not only on the dramaturgical aspects of the tragic plot, but also on the cultural categories that make this representation intelligible to the Athenian audience at the end of the fifth century BC. Following Louis Gernet’s historical-anthropological approach based on the notion of "polyvalence des images", this paper aims to define a mythical pattern – the connection between the bending of a tree and the dismemberment of a human victim – already attested in the Attic legend of Theseus and Sinis, in which both characters se…
Travestirsi per Dioniso
2020
Starting from the definition of “performativity” and “gender parody” developed by Judith Butler, this paper aims to investigate the performative functions of male cross-dressing within the dynamics of social categorization in classical Athens. For this purpose I have adopted an eclectic hermeneutic toolbox, borrowing elements from Harvey Sacks’ Membership Categorization Analysis to René Girard’s scapegoat theory. Through the philological analysis of some literary representations of transvestism, such as Pentheus’ cross-dressing in Euripides’ "Bacchae", and the anthropological interpretation of the mythical-ritual complex relating to the effeminacy of Dionysus, my work focuses on the polyval…