Authority and Empowerment of Female Voices in Greek Tragedy

The portrayal of female voices in Greek tragedy has been mostly concerned with emphasizing the marginality of female agency as a direct reflection of women’s subalternity in the Athenian city-state. Alternatively, their characterization has been explained away as the product of male self-centred concerns and anxieties. Thirdly, a wide range of verbal genres and registers has been identified as distinctive of female gender and set in contrast to male ways of expression. 

In the effort of redressing the prevailing research paradigms, the conference will explore the forms of poetic, civic, and linguistic authority bestowed upon female speakers in Greek tragedy. Female speakers may exert their control over plots, direct other characters’ actions, or reshape mythical stories in order to achieve power and influence on stage. In terms of social values, female speakers may challenge male worldviews, appropriate space usually restricted in real life, or establish their prominence as a group. Finally, female characters can act as powerful speakers by deploying (or avoiding) frankness, controlling verbal interaction, claiming assertiveness, or appropriating the tools of persuasive rhetoric.

Programme

9.00 Corinne Bonnet | Scuola Normale Superiore
Welcome and introduction

Session 1

Chair: Marco Catrambone | Scuola Normale Superiore

9.15 Lyndsay Coo | University of Bristol
The authority of the collective in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women
10.00 Enrico Medda | Università di Pisa
Dal pianto nascosto al canto di vittoria: la voce corale nelle Coefore di Eschilo

10.45 Coffee break

Session 2

Chair: Giovan Battista D’Alessio | Sapienza Università di Roma

11.15 Cecilia Nobili | Università degli Studi di Bergamo
The economy of marriage in the lyric and tragic voice: women’s perspective and public debate
12.00 Stefano Fanucchi | Scuola Normale Superiore
Women’s gaze in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis

12.45 Lunch

Session 3

Chair: Stefano Fanucchi | Scuola Normale Superiore

14.30 Laura Swift | University of Oxford
Characterisation, authority, and femininity in the newest Ino fragment
15.15 Leyla Ozbek | Università di Pisa
Fragments of Euripides' dramaturgy: mothers and stepmothers in the mirror. Nephele, Ino, Themisto

16.00 Coffee break

Session 4

Chair: Cristina Pepe | Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

16.30 Marco Catrambone | Scuola Normale Superiore
Assertive daughters, abhorrent mothers: Electra’s authority and the Sophoclean agōn
17.15 Evert van Emde Boas | Aarhus University
Female authority and conversational “repair” in Greek tragedy
18.00 Luigi Battezzato | Scuola Normale Superiore
Creusa’s parrhesiastic voice: linguistic and poetic authority in Euripides’ Ion

18.45 Conclusion

19.30 Dinner

The link for online attendance can be found here. Registration is mandatory for non-SNS users attending online: please fill in the registration form by 19 September 2025. 
 

PRIN 2022MYMSLK “Female voices in a public context: authorial articulation and mimetic representation in ancient Greek literature”, che vede la partecipazione di Scuola Normale Superiore, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” e Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. 
 

^{Img: Tragic Actors - 3rd century AD, Berlin, Altes Museum (from Larium, near Rome) - CC BY Egisto Sani via Flickr}