Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy

Download or read book Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy written by Dorota M. Dutsch and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-08-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As literature written in Latin has almost no female authors, we are dependent on male writers for some understanding of the way women would have spoken. Plautus (3rd to 2nd century BCE) and Terence (2nd century BCE) consistently write particular linguistic features into the lines spoken by their female characters: endearments, soft speech, and incoherent focus on numerous small problems. Dorota M. Dutsch describes the construction of this feminine idiom and asks whether it should be considered as evidence of how Roman women actually spoke.