Parola di donna: giuramenti femminili nella letteratura greca e latina

Our dissertation discusses the literary representation of female characters involved in the oath scenes of classic literature. In the first section of this work oath is analyzed from a linguistic, historical, juridical and anthropological point of view, providing references to many historical and literary sources. The second section consists of a selection of greek and latin texts of the archaic, classic and hellenistic period: our comment focuses on the oath formula, gestures and on the role of female characters, underlining the complex relation created by the interaction of female representation and oath as a speech act and an authoritative utterance. Each text is both exemplary for a specific phenomenology and it is indicative of peculiar literary themes, which are discussed. This tension between gender performance and performative language sometimes reveals a criticism concerned with social conventions and traditional values. Furthermore, it is also possible to identify some topic elements in different literary genres and to define some fixed and recurrent schemes.