Thesis (Ph. D.)--Universität Zürich.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Littérature générale et comparée : Lyon 2 : 2005. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr.

The woman has always been an invisible individual behind the act of ’Great men’ in the Roman society. The woman’s gender role has forever been specified where the woman is a submissive, quiet and an unintelligent individual who wants to do everything for her man. Even though this gender role is created by authors that are men and is about how they consider a woman should behave, what about the women’s view on this matter? By means of getting an answer to this question, we can get a fuller perspective and an understanding about the Roman woman and as a woman writer in a patriarchal society. The purpose with this essay will therefore be to give a fuller perspective about the Roman society and its woman writers. In order to fulfill this purpose, I have asked the following questions: How did men react when women published their literary work and is it possible to investigate how the women thought about themselves through analyzing their work. And how was it possible for a woman to publish her texts in a society where women had no rights and a small chance to publish her work for the public? In order to have been able for doing this examination I have delimit myself and investigate three women, Cornelia, Hortensia and Sulpicia. Cornelia wrote letters, Hortensia wrote and delivered a speech and Sulpicia wrote poems. I have used the ancient sources Appian, Nepos, Tibullus to get the quotes of the women’s texts. I have also used other ancient sources like Aelian, Cicero, Ovid, Plutarch, Pliny, Quintilian and Valerius Maximus for other valuable information about the three women and their literature. They contribute with comments about the women and about women’s possibilities to get an education. I have a gender role and feminist view through the entire essay as the main focus is the three roman women writers. I have done this by analyzing the women’s texts and investigated what men thought about them and high educated women generally. And how the society encounters this texts. Through all this we have got a better understanding about how the attitude was towards the Roman woman and how she looked upon herself – and with that a fuller perspective on the Roman woman in general instead of the androcentric view we had before. There are a lot of variables that contribute to whether the woman can publish her work which is status, wealth, her loyalty to Rome and contacts with important people. Through all these men were relative positive about the three women’s texts and the women themselves were relative positive to themselves.