Amy Richlin

Bio: Amy Richlin is an academic researcher from University of California, Los Angeles. The author has contributed to research in topics: Comedy & Feminist theory. The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 40 publications receiving 1388 citations. Previous affiliations of Amy Richlin include University of Southern California & Dartmouth College.

The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor

Abstract: Statues of the god Priapus stood in Roman gardens to warn potential thieves that the god would rape them if they attempted to steal from him. Amy Richlin argues that the attitude of sexual aggressiveness in defence of a bounded area serves as a model for Roman satire from Lucilius to Juvenal. Using literary, anthropological, psychological, and feminist methodologies, she suggests that aggressive sexual humour reinforces aggressive behaviour on both the individual and societal level, and that Roman satire provides an insight into Roman culture.

Pornography and representation in Greece and Rome

Abstract: This collection of essays represents one of the very few large-scale applications of feminist theory to Greco-Roman antiquity. It is unusual in that texts and works of art are considered jointly. The essays consider Greek tragedy and major figures such as Aristophanes, the Roman historian Livy and the poet Ovid from a feminist perspective; they take into account the new work being done on ancient novels; and they deal with previously neglected topics such as the anthologist Athenaeus, and the fragments of erotic handbooks (the ancient pornographers).

Feminist Theory and the Classics

Abstract: 1. Introduction Part I Redefining the Field 2. Black Feminist Thought and Classics 3. Feminist Theory, Historical Periods, Literary Canons and the Study of Greco-Roman Antiquity Part II Male Writing Female 4. Finding the Female in Roman Poetry 5. Film Theory and the Gendered Voice in Seneca Part III Gynocentrics 6. Women and Language in Archaic Greece 7. Using Native American Models for the Study of Women in Ancient Greece 8. Out of the Closet and into the Field Part IV Material Culture 9. The Case for not Ignoring Marx in the Study of Women in Antiquity 10. Feminist Research in Classical Arcaeology 11. The Ethnographer's Dilemma and the Dream of a Lost Golden Age

Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

Abstract: The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.

A companion to the ancient Greek language

Abstract: Mycenaean texts : the Linear B tablets / Silvia Ferrara -- Phoinikēia grammata : an alphabet for the Greek language / Roger D. Woodard -- Inscriptions / Rudolph Wachter -- Papyri / Arthur Verhoogt -- The manuscript tradition / Niels Gaul -- Phonology / Philomen Probert -- Morphology and word formation / Michael Weiss -- Semantics and vocabulary / Michael Clarke -- Syntax / Evert van Emde Boas and Luuk Huitink -- Pragmatics : speech and text / Egbert J. Bakker -- Greek and Proto-Indo-European / Jeremy Rau -- Mycenaean Greek / Rupert Thompson -- Greek dialects in the archaic and classical ages / Stephen Colvin -- Greek and the languages of Asia Minor to the classical period / Shane Hawkins -- Linguistic diversity in Asia Minor during the Empire : Koine and the non-Greek languages / Claude Brixhe -- Greek in Egypt / Sofia Torallas Tovar -- Jewish and Christian Greek / Coulter H. George -- Greek and Latin bilingualism / Bruno Rochette -- Register variation / Andreas Willi -- Female speech / Thorsten Fogen -- Forms of address and markers of status / Eleanor Dickey -- Technical languages : science and medicine / Francesca Schironi -- Inherited poetics / Joshua T. Katz -- Language and meter / Gregory Nagy -- Literary dialects / Olga Tribulato -- The Greek of epic / Olav Hackstein -- The language of Greek lyric poetry / Michael Silk -- The Greek of Athenian tragedy / Richard Rutherford -- Kunstprosa : philosophy, history, oratory / Victor Bers -- The literary heritage as language : Atticism and second sophistic / Lawrence Kim -- Greek philosophers on language / Casper C. de Jonge and Johannes M. van Ophuijsen -- The birth of grammar in Greece / Andreas U. Schmidhauser -- Language as a system in ancient rhetoric and grammar / James I. Porter -- Byzantine literature and the classical past / Staffan Wahlgren -- Medieval and early modern Greek / David Holton and Io Manolessou -- Modern Greek / Peter Mackridge.

Social Variation and the Latin Language

Abstract: Languages show variations according to the social class of speakers and Latin was no exception, as readers of Petronius are aware. The Romance languages have traditionally been regarded as developing out of a 'language of the common people' (Vulgar Latin), but studies of modern languages demonstrate that linguistic change does not merely come, in the social sense, 'from below'. There is change from above, as prestige usages work their way down the social scale, and change may also occur across the social classes. This book is a history of many of the developments undergone by the Latin language as it changed into Romance, demonstrating the varying social levels at which change was initiated. About thirty topics are dealt with, many of them more systematically than ever before. Discussions often start in the early Republic with Plautus, and the book is as much about the literary language as about informal varieties.