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What activities did the women of ancient Greece perform in the sphere of ritual, and what were the meanings of such activities for them and their culture? By offering answers to these questions, this study aims to recover and reconstruct an important dimension of the lived experience of ancient Greek women. A comprehensive and sophisticated investigation of the ritual roles of women in ancient Greece, it draws on a wide range of evidence from across the Greek world, including literary and historical texts, inscriptions, and vase-paintings, to assemble a portrait of women as religious and cultural agents, despite the ideals of seclusion within the home and exclusion from public arenas that we know restricted their lives. As she builds a picture of the extent and diversity of women's ritual activity, Barbara Goff shows that they were entrusted with some of the most important processes by which the community guaranteed its welfare. She examines the ways in which women's ritual activity addressed issues of sexuality and civic participation, showing that ritual could offer women genuinely alternative roles and identities even while it worked to produce wives and mothers who functioned well in this male-dominated society. Moving to more speculative analysis, she discusses the possibility of a women's subculture focused on ritual and investigates the significance of ritual in women's poetry and vase-paintings that depict women. She also includes a substantial exploration of the representation of women as ritual agents in fifth-century Athenian drama.

Greek literature --- Rites and ceremonies in literature --- Religion and literature --- Women --- Women and literature --- Rites and ceremonies --- Religion in literature --- Women in literature --- History and criticism --- Religious life --- Femme (Théologie chrétienne) dans la littérature --- Femmes dans la littérature --- Femmes dans la poésie --- Femmes dans le théâtre --- Godsdienst in de literatuur --- Religion dans la littérature --- Rites et cérémonies dans la littérature --- Ritussen en ceremoniën in de literatuur --- Vrouw (Christelijke theologie) in de literatuur --- Vrouwen in de literatuur --- Vrouwen in de poëzie --- Vrouwen in het toneel --- Woman (Christian theology) in literature --- Women in drama --- Women in poetry --- Human females --- Wimmin --- Woman --- Womon --- Womyn --- Females --- Human beings --- Femininity --- Religion in drama --- Religion in poetry --- Literature --- Literature and religion --- Moral and religious aspects --- Greece --- Rites and ceremonies in literature. --- Religion in literature. --- Women in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Greek literature - History and criticism --- Religion and literature - Greece --- Women - Religious life - Greece --- Women and literature - Greece --- Rites and ceremonies - Greece --- Women - Greece --- ancient greece. --- ancient history. --- antiquities. --- archaeology. --- athens. --- classicism. --- community. --- domesticity. --- drama. --- female sexuality. --- feminist theory. --- folkore. --- gender roles. --- gender studies. --- gender. --- greek art. --- greek drama. --- greek literature. --- greek women. --- greek world. --- hellenism. --- literary criticism. --- mythology. --- nonfiction. --- patriarchy. --- religion. --- rite. --- ritual. --- sacred. --- seclusion. --- sexuality. --- theater. --- theatre. --- theology. --- tradition. --- vase painting. --- women and religion. --- women. --- womens poetry. --- womens studies.