Perpetual Contest-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Perpetual Contest

Published:2020-01-31 Issue: Volume: Page:
ISSN:
Container-title:Martyrdom
language:
Short-container-title:

Author:

Bal Mieke¹

Affiliation:

1. the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis

Abstract

Mieke Bal examines the first autobiographical text written by a woman which concerns the life of the Carthaginian martyr Perpetua. The analysis combines narratology, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, in a voluntarily anachronistic appropriation of this unique document. Scenes of martyrdom are etched on our retina, because there are so many artworks that represent them. The case Bal analyses, however, is literary, although some of its metaphors and descriptions are vividly visual. Bal speculates that a contest shapes the one that informs Perpetua’s choice for this particular martyrdom: the contest between male and female, or rather, the contest for masculinity. Perpetua’s move away from femininity would lead her, not so much to give up sex as to enjoy it in the only way she could have access to it, turns this story of victimhood into a story of victory: over gender-limitations and over narration.

Publisher

Amsterdam University Press

Reference53 articles.

1. Alphen, Ernst van. (1988). Bij wijze van lezen. Verleiding en verzet van Willem Brakmans lezer. Muiderberg: Coutinho.

2. Alphen, Ernst van. (1988 a). ‘Literal Metaphors: On Rereading Post/Modernism’. Style 21 (2): 208-218.

3. Alphen, Ernst van. (1993). Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self. London: Reaktion Books; Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

4. Ashbrook, Susan Harvey. (1990). ‘Women in Early Byzantine Hagiography: Reversing the Story’. In “That Gentle Strength”: Historical Perspectives on Women and Christianity. Lynda L. Coon et al. (eds.). Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 36-59.

5. Bal, Mieke. (1988). Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre and Scholarship on Sisera’s Death. Matthew Gumpert (trans.). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.