Feminine bestiary and the discourse of the mulieres plautinae

• Grant number: 12/21554-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: January 15, 2013
• End date: September 14, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Languages
• Principal Investigator: Isabella Tardin Cardoso
• Grantee: Carol Martins da Rocha
• Supervisor: Jürgen Paul Schwindt
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Heidelberg University, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 10/20403-4 - Linguaculae women: mulieres plautinae, their gender and discourse, BP.DR

Abstract

Only two plays (Captiui e Trinummus) of the 21 remaining comedies of Plautus (III-II b.C.) do not have women among their characters. This way, we can't deny the important role of the female characters in the poet's texts. The typology of these characters (and their relevance to the plot) varies as the conventional repertory of the fabula palliata varies. Taking this variation of types into consideration, we are going to look carefully, mainly, at linguistics aspects: not only the way some women speak, but also the way they become target of the male and other women speeches. The range of features that we have noticed until the current stage of our research indicates that it lacks a systematization of the aspects of the female language and of the female discourse (and of the discourse about the feminine) in the Plautine work. Our focus in the present research project is to observe such aspects, by means of detecting constants and contrasts in the characterization of the characters, mainly with respect to the comparison between women and animals. To accomplish that goal, it is essential to take into consideration the bibliography, to which we don't have access in our country, e. g. studies about bestiaries, in Plautus and in relation to other authors of the Antiquity, and more up-to-date bibliography about our poet. This project aims to give a broader contribution to an overview of the female language and of the view about the women in the comedy of Plautus. (AU)