Anzeige
Erschienen in:
2015 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel
Dystopian Amazons: Fantasies of Patriarchy in Le Gladiatrici (1963)
verfasst von : Antony Augoustakis
Erschienen in: Classical Myth on Screen
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US
Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.
Wählen Sie Textabschnitte aus um mit Künstlicher Intelligenz passenden Patente zu finden. powered by
Markieren Sie Textabschnitte, um KI-gestützt weitere passende Inhalte zu finden. powered by
Amazons have fueled the literary imagination of ancient Greek and Roman authors from the epic cycle and Herodotus to Quintus of Smyrna and beyond.1 As a group, these marginal and transgressive women are portrayed as skillful in battle against men, a stereotype reinforced by the popular etymology of their name from the Greek a-mazon (“without breast”), which is connected to the tale of their cauterizing the right breast to facilitate spear-throwing—among other tales of their strange customs created by male authors.2 In ancient Italy, female gladiators were fashioned after the Amazons. While productions such as the film Gladiator (2000) and the STARZ series Spartacus (2010–2013) have acquainted modern audiences with the gladiator as male hero who enacts subversion while promoting the prevailing cultural image of masculinity, Roman authors occasionally speak of the gladiatrix as a monstrosity who transgresses the norms of her gender and nature itself—an opinion that survived into modernity.3