Home > Feminism > Women and Women's Writings from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages - Jennifer A. Sheridan (Essay Date 1998)
Women and Women's Writings from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages - Jennifer A. Sheridan (Essay Date 1998)
JENNIFER A. SHERIDAN (ESSAY DATE 1998)
SOURCE: Sheridan, Jennifer A. "Not at a Loss for Words: The Economic Power of Literate Women in Late Antique Egypt." Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 128 (1998): 189-203.
In the following excerpt, Sheridan discusses female literacy in Roman Egypt during the early centuries of the common era.
A literate woman was a rarity in the Graeco-Roman world. Only among the upper socio-economic classes could one expect to find any women who could read or write.1 Ancient men, themselves mostly illiterate, were clearly unsettled by the idea of a literate woman. It is apparent, in a number of sarcastic quips preserved from antiquity, that men understood the power that literacy might bestow on a woman. A fragment of a comic play, for example, reads "The man who teaches a woman letters does not do well; he gives more poison to a frightening...
[The entire page is 3817 words long]
Navigate
- Introduction
- Representative Works
-
Primary Sources
- Pan Chao (Poem Date C. 1St Century)
- Yu Xuanji (Lyric Date C. 9Th Century)
- Three Beautiful Sisters, Orphaned Young
- Izumi Shikibu (Diary Date C. Early 11Th Century)
- Marie De France (Poem Date C. 12Th Century)
- Heloise (Letter Date C. 1163/64)
- Catherine Of Siena (Essay Date 1370)
- Birgitta Of Sweden (Essay Date C. 1377)
- Women In The Ancient World
- Women In The Medieval World
- Women In Classical Art And Literature
- Women In Medieval Art And Literature
- Classical And Medieval Women Writers
- Further Reading
- Copyright
