Playing the Other

Relations between the sexes were among the most pervasive concerns of ancient Greek thought and literature, extending from considerations of sex roles in domestic and political spheres to the organization of the cosmos as a pantheon of gods and goddesses. In Playing the Other Froma I. Zeitlin explores the diversity and complexity of these interactions through the most influential literary texts of the archaic and classical periods, from epic (Homer) and didactic poetry (Hesiod) to the productions of tragedy and comedy in fifth-century Athens. With incisive analysis and theoretical sophistication, she demonstrates the workings of gender in Greek social, religious, and cultural practices and in ideas about nature and culture, public and private, citizen and outsider, self and other, mortal and immortal.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.