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The first comprehensive study of early Celtic cursing, this work analyses both medieval and ancient expressions of Celtic imprecation: from the binding tablets of ancient Britain and Gaul to the saintly maledictions of the early medieval period, and other traces of Celtic stipulation and binding only speculated on in earlier scholarship. It provides the first full overview and analyses of the ancient Celtic use of binding curses (as attested in Old Celticand Latin inscriptions) and examines their mooted influence in later medieval expressions. Ancient finds (among them long Gaulish curse texts, Celtic Latin Curse tablets found from the Alpine regions to Britain, and fragments of Old Brittonic tablets excavated from Roman Bath) are subjected to rigorous new interpretations, and medieval reflections of the earlier tradition are also considered. BERNARD MEES gained his PhD from the University of Melbourne.

Mythology, Celtic. --- Blessing and cursing --- Celts --- History. --- Religion. --- Cursing and blessing --- Execration --- Imprecation --- Malediction --- Incantations --- Celtic mythology --- Folklore. --- Ancient Britain. --- Binding Curses. --- Celtic Cursing. --- Curse Tablets. --- Early Medieval Period. --- Gaul. --- Influence. --- Latin Inscriptions. --- Magical Charms. --- Medieval Expressions. --- Old Celtic. --- Stipulation.

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In ancient Athens, where freedom of speech derived from the power of male citizenship, women's voices were seldom heard in public. Female speech was more often represented in theatrical productions through women characters written and enacted by men. In Spoken Like a Woman, the first book-length study of women's speech in classical drama, Laura McClure explores the discursive practices attributed to women of fifth-century b.c. Greece and to what extent these representations reflected a larger reality. Examining tragedies and comedies by a variety of authors, she illustrates how the dramatic poets exploited speech conventions among both women and men to construct characters and to convey urgent social and political issues.From gossip to seductive persuasion, women's verbal strategies in the theater potentially subverted social and political hierarchy, McClure argues, whether the women characters were overtly or covertly duplicitous, in pursuit of adultery, or imitating male orators. Such characterization helped justify the regulation of women's speech in the democratic polis. The fact that women's verbal strategies were also used to portray male transvestites and manipulators, however, suggests that a greater threat of subversion lay among the spectators' own ranks, among men of uncertain birth and unscrupulous intent, such as demagogues skilled in the art of persuasion. Traditionally viewed as outsiders with ambiguous loyalties, deceitful and tireless in their pursuit of eros, women provided the dramatic poets with a vehicle for illustrating the dangerous consequences of political power placed in the wrong hands.

Greek drama --- Women and literature --- Greek language --- Sex role in literature. --- Speech in literature. --- Gender identity in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Sex differences. --- Spoken Greek. --- Athens (Greece) --- Intellectual life. --- Adonia. --- Areopagus. --- Assembly. --- Bacchylides. --- Baubo. --- Boulē. --- Cimon. --- Cleisthenes. --- Cleomedes. --- Demeter. --- Demosthenes. --- Diodorus Siculus. --- Hesiod. --- Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. --- Lysias. --- Nicias. --- Nossis. --- Pharmaka. --- Rayor, D. --- Rothwell, K. --- Sappho. --- Sophocles. --- Thelgein. --- Theognis. --- Thesmophoria. --- Verbal genres: defined. --- actors. --- aischrologia. --- arrhēta. --- courtesans. --- curse tablets. --- demagogues. --- dokimasia. --- doxa. --- epitaphios. --- female choruses. --- gossip. --- gynaecocracy. --- invective against women. --- isonomia. --- isēgoria. --- kokuō. --- kosmēsis. --- kurios. --- lamentation. --- law courts. --- obscenity. --- ololugē. --- parrhēsia. --- partheneion. --- persuasion. --- prostitution. --- rhetoric. --- wedding ritual. --- women: adultery of.