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Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles – Greek myths, women’s voices, and colonial violence
In “The Public Voice of Women”, the classicist Mary Beard writes about a text by Aristophanes: “Part of the joke was that women couldn’t speak properly in public – or rather, they couldn’t adapt their private speech […] to the lofty idiom of male politics”. Beard examines in her text how (Western) ideas about public speech and debate are infused with ideas (“conventions and rules”) developed in ancient Greece and Rome. Analyzing exemplary texts, she argues that public speaking and oratory was not only a practice women were barred from but even more so “exclusive practices and skills that defined masculinity as a gender”. When I read through her analysis,…
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Women’s Prize for Fiction: My Personal Shortlist
Tonight at midnight the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist will be announced. So, a few hours left to be cheer for one’s favourite books on the list and guess what will actually make the cut. During the last two months, I have read (almost) all books of the longlist I had not yet read. Having worked my way through the list, I can say that I appreciate the variety in styles and themes. Although I also questioned the inclusion of some titles (especially when thinking about some ommissions from the list). I tried to categorize all the books and within each category, they are roughly sorted from ‘liked most’ to ‘liked least’.…