Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece Laura K. McClure Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece. By Gloria Ferrari. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. 352. $60.00 (cloth). Although it has become more and more common in academic disciplines to read visual representations alongside literary texts, the field of classics, [End Page 238] traditionally split into archaeological and philological pursuits, has been slow to bridge the divide. In Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece, Gloria Ferrari has managed an almost seamless joining of these two realms, deftly using visual and literary materials to shed light on one another reciprocally. This skillful interweaving affords greater access to the intellectual structures that informed ancient conceptions of gender than a simple art historical or literary analysis. In so doing, Ferrari has given us an ambitious, compelling book that will challenge its readers to rethink some of the prevailing contemporary views of gender and sexuality in ancient Greece. Structural linguistics and semiotic theory play a crucial role in framing this book's argument. The central hypothesis is that the same "projections of thought" (7) inform both literary texts and visual representations inasmuch as both modes make use of metaphor. Ferrari applies Jakobson's model of language as a communicative event to the interpretation of images, with emphasis on pattern, convention, and, especially, context. The utterance or picture comprises the syntagmatic chain in which signs are combined in a particular message; the paradigmatic alludes to the context or to the associations of a community of viewers. Images are analogous to language in that they represent a social construct not easily interpreted by outsiders; as cultural signs, they are subject to organization, combining syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations. This theoretical approach permits Ferrari to show the close connection between Attic vase paintings and "comparable images in different media, some also visual, such as ritual performances, others verbal, such as poetry and mythological narratives" (61). Throughout, she stresses that visual representations do not transparently reflect social or historical reality any more than literary representations but instead are fictions, "things that are thought not to exist but may be imagined" (19). Visual representations of maidens, for example, do not permit us to view the actual condition of women in ancient Greece but, rather, the ways in which femininity was defined. The book falls roughly into two parts, the first of which (chapters 1-3) explores questions of method; namely, how can visual signs be identified, if at all, and how are figures constructed? Ferrari focuses on stock scenes of female wool working, identifying three main themes in which wool working or its implements figure prominently: toilette, domestic tableaux, the reception of male figures, or a combination of these. The author demonstrates that these scenes feature a limited number of figures used repeatedly, like formulas, in a narrow thematic range; simple vignettes serve as the building blocks, or syntagmas, for more complex scenes. In Ferrari's view these scenes emphasize not work but play; indeed, all of them concern not cloth production or housekeeping but rather love and beauty to construct "a certain kind of femininity" (34). Moreover, the location of these scenes is fictional rather than real: they are often set in a courtyard or [End Page 239] front porch (prothura) that mediates the inner world of the palace and its exterior but does not correspond to any real architectural space. In such a place noble youths may approach protected maidens in courtship. This interpretation effectively refutes the traditional view that these scenes represent courtesans (hetairai) and their customers. The vases are also consistent in the ways they represent the spinner: she often appears surrounded by attendants, the visual equivalent of Aphrodite and the Graces or Artemis and her companions; she wraps herself with a cloak in a gesture of modesty or protection; she is preoccupied with bath and costume and with working wool. These wool workers are thus maidens, not sex workers, marriageable girls "sexually charged but innocent of sex" (47). Similarly, the frequent association of wool working with adornment, baths, and perfumes evokes not only the beauty of the maiden but also emphasizes her virginity...