There are languages – e.g., German, Inuktitut, andRussian – in which the aspectual reference of clausesdepends on the telicity of their event predicates. Weargue that in such languages, clauses or verb phrasesnot overtly marked for viewpoint aspect implicateor entail `event realization'', a property akin toParsons''s (1990) `culmination''. The aspectualreference associated with the use of clauses notovertly marked for aspect is computed in accordancewith the dependence of realization conditions ontelicity and in line with principles of Gricean pragmatics.We formalize event realization and (...) capture thetelicity-dependent patterns of aspectual reference onwhich it is based by combining Krifka''s (1989, 1992,1998) event lattices with a model-theoreticinterpretation of Klein''s (1994) theory of tense andaspect. The latter permits us to treat the `topic times''of aspectual operators as temporal constraints on event realization. (shrink)

Objective To develop an ethically, legally, and clinically appropriate ventilator allocation policy for AdventHealth Tampa and AdventHealth Carrollwood in Tampa, Florida, which could be enacted swiftly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methods During Spring 2020, a subcommittee of the Medical Ethics Committee established consensus on the fundamental principles of the policy, then built on existing ethical, legal, and clinical guidance. Results The plan was finalized in May 2020. The plan triages patients based on exclusion criteria (imminent mortality), prognosis and expected benefit (...) of ventilation (using the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment), and change in prognosis over time. Decisions are made by committee in order to minimize moral distress among individual patient care providers. Conclusions Due to international concerns about healthcare resource shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic, hospitals need allocation policies informed by the crisis standard of care, the hospital’s ethical duty to plan for an emergency, and federal civil rights laws Policy Implications: This type of policy can serve as a model for other institutions to develop crisis standards of care resource allocation policies, which are a necessary component of disaster planning. (shrink)

A dearth of literature focuses on the relationship between acculturation, power distance and liminality for migrant nurses entering foreign workplaces. Expectations are for migrant nurses to be practice‐ready swiftly. However, this aspiration is naïve given the complex shifts that occur in deeply held cultural beliefs and practices and is dependent on an organisational climate of reciprocal willingness to adapt and learn. This exploratory study identified that although a plethora of literature addresses challenges migrant nurses face, there are limited data that (...) link these transitional processes to concepts that might usefully guide transitions. This study draws from the overarching concept of acculturation, together with Hofstede's (2011) notion of power distance and the theory of liminality to explore the experiences of eight migrant nurses. Data highlighted that adjusting to altered hierarchical relationships took many months because negotiating power distance challenged deeply held beliefs and assumptions about professional and organisational hierarchies. Migrant nurses’ accounts indicated a paucity of organisational processes to address these difficulties; therefore, they navigated this liminal space of adjustment to power distance differences in an ad hoc manner. Their acculturation experiences, arguably unnecessarily prolonged, indicate the value in workplace commitment to exploring a collaborative, critically reflective approach to optimise transitions. (shrink)

Plato famously promised to complement the Sophist and the Statesman with another work on a third sort of expert, the philosopher--but we do not have this final dialogue. Mary Louise Gill argues that Plato promised the Philosopher, but did not write it, in order to stimulate his audience and encourage his readers to work out, for themselves, the portrait it would have contained. The Sophist and Statesman are themselves members of a larger series starting with the Theaetetus, Plato's investigation (...) of knowledge, and the whole series relies on the Parmenides, the second part of which presents a philosophical exercise, introduced as the first step in a larger philosophical program. Gill contends that the dialogues leading up to the missing Philosopher, though they reach some substantive conclusions, are philosophical exercises of various sorts designed to train students in dialectic, the philosopher's method; and that a second version of the Parmenides exercise, closely patterned on it, spans parts of the Theaetetus and Sophist and brings the philosopher into view. This is the exercise about being, the subject-matter studied by Plato's philosopher. Plato hides the pieces of the puzzle and its solution in plain sight, forcing his students (and modern readers) to dig out the pieces and reconstruct the project. Gill reveals how, in finding the philosopher through the exercise, the student becomes a philosopher by mastering his methods. She shows that the target of Plato's exercise is internally related to its pedagogical purpose. (shrink)

Adolescence, defined in the US as 11–21 years of age, is a critical period for prevention, as it marks the onset of risk behaviors. Minor (<18 years) self-consent and inclusion in biomedical resear...

The loss of friendship can be a frequent occurrence for children as they explore their social worlds and navigate their way through the demands of particular relationships. Given that friendship is a relationship of special regard, and associated with a particular partiality to our friends, the ending of friendship and the subsequent interactions between former friends, can be difficult areas for schools to deal with. Whilst there has been considerable research on the formation and maintenance of friendship, a consideration of (...) what happens after friendship has had surprisingly limited attention. Much of our current understanding of issues on moral behaviour fails to fully address the positioning of former friends in our moral thinking particularly as regards matters arising from the priority of attachment. Recent empirical research seems to indicate that the memory of prior encounters has a far greater influence on future reciprocal exchanges than previously accepted. This paper considers suggests that this view of memory can be played out in two contrasting ways. First, a prudential view suggests that as our former friends were previously given access to our intimate secrets and confidences, self-interest would seem to indicate that we treat them well. Secondly, a residual duties view suggests that some obligations remain after the friendship has ended based on the history of the relationship. Finally, I then draw out some of the implications this may have for schools and the education of children. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.4 (2004) 411-425 [Access article in PDF] Vulnerability, Vulnerable Populations, and Policy Mary C. Ruof "Special justification is required for inviting vulnerable individuals to serve as research subjects and, if they are selected, the means of protecting their rights and welfare must be strictly applied."Guideline 13: Research Involving Vulnerable Persons International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects Council for International Organizations (...) of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) and World Health Organization (WHO) Geneva, Switzerland, 2002 Within medical research and healthcare certain groups are afforded special protections and services because of their designation as vulnerable. The vulnerable require special justification to participate in human subject research in order to eliminate potential human rights abuses. The Nuremberg Code of 1947 was written in response to the extreme human subject abuses that occurred under the Nazi regime, and, although the intent of the 1947 Code was to protect human rights, rigid voluntary consent requirements deprived some individuals of the right to participate in clinical trials. Recent human research guidelines, such as the CIOMS/WHO guidelines referenced above and the guidelines referenced in Section V of this Scope Note, attempt to balance both protection from abuse in research and access to new, experimental treatments for the vulnerable.Although various protective guidelines stipulate special protections for vulnerable populations, the concept of vulnerability and consequently the criteria designating vulnerable populations remain vague. Precisely who are the vulnerable? The word "vulnerability" stems from the Latin vulnerare, "to wound." (Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary 1995). In clinical research, the term [End Page 411] vulnerable generally is applied to individuals who are unable to give informed consent or who are susceptible to coercion. The Common Rule (45 CFR 46, Subpart A) includes as vulnerable research subjects: children, prisoners, pregnant women, and persons who are handicapped, mentally disabled, economically disadvantaged, or educationally disadvantaged. Although the Common Rule specifies certain vulnerable categories, the guidelines were not intended to be exclusive, leaving open the interpretation of vulnerability.In medical research and health policy, vulnerability is an abstract concept that has concrete effects both for those labeled vulnerable and for those not. Clinical researchers, healthcare workers, ethical reviewers, and policymakers must be able to identify vulnerable subjects to establish how healthcare resources will be allocated and who will qualify for special protections and socialized benefits. Attempts to quantify vulnerability in clear, measurable ways have met little if any consensus. As Alexander Morawa (II, 2003, p. 150) states, "There is no single approach to definition of vulnerability. In fact, there is no purposeful categorisation at all."Difficulties in defining vulnerability have prompted discourse surrounding its utility as a qualifying factor in the allocation of health resources and its appropriateness as a guiding principle in bioethics. Some of the authors cited in this Scope Note argue against the labeling and categorization of vulnerable individuals and populations. "Labeling individuals as 'vulnerable' risks viewing vulnerable individuals as 'others' worthy of pity, a view rarely appreciated" (III, Danis and Patrick 2002, p. 320). The categories of vulnerable groups listed under the Common Rule have been the source of controversy, "for example, many find the suggestion that pregnant women are vulnerable to be quite sexist" (IV, DeBruin 2001, p. 7). Instead of creating categories of vulnerable populations, would it not be better to derive an account of just treatment from a just social policy at large that encompasses human vulnerabilities (II, Brock 2002, p. 283).For some of the authors listed here, the concept of vulnerability is essential to bioethics. Robert Goodin (I, 1985, p. 107) writes that the vulnerability of other human beings is the source of our special responsibilities to them. In contrast to the four American principles of biomedical ethics—autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice—the four principles of European bioethics and biolaw include vulnerability along with autonomy, dignity, and integrity. According to, Jacob Dahl Rendtorff and Peter Kemp (I, 2000, p. 274) "the principle of vulnerability is ontologically prior to the other [European] principles, it expresses better than all of the other ethical principles... the finitude of the human condition."Some of the... (shrink)

Just Life reorients ethics and politics around the generativity of mothers and daughters rather than the right to property and the sexual proprieties of the Oedipal drama. Invoking two concrete universals – everyone is born of a woman and everyone needs to eat – Rawlinson rethinks labor and food as relationships that make ethical claims and sustain agency. Just Life counters the capitalization of bodies under biopower with the solidarity of sovereign bodies.

To promote ethical practices, healthcare managers must understand the ethical challenges encountered by key stakeholders. To characterize ethical challenges in Veterans Administration (VA) facilities from the perspectives of managers, clinicians, patients, and ethics consultants. We conducted focus groups with patients (n = 32) and managers (n = 38); semi-structured interviews with managers (n = 31), clinicians (n = 55), and ethics committee chairpersons (n = 21). Data were analyzed using content analysis. Managers reported that the greatest ethical challenge was fairly (...) distributing resources across programs and services, whereas clinicians identified the effect of resource constraints on patient care. Ethics committee chairpersons identified end-of-life care as the greatest ethical challenge, whereas patients identified obtaining fair, respectful, and caring treatment. Perspectives on ethical challenges varied depending on the respondent's role. Understanding these differences can help managers take practical steps to address these challenges. Further, ethics committees seemingly, are not addressing the range of ethical challenges within their institutions. (shrink)

From the title, Interpreting Duns Scotus, one would expect to find in this volume a type of meta-study. By this I mean that each article would reveal as much about the author as about the subject,...

This paper challenges contemporary portrayals in the nursing literature of the spaces within which care of patients in hospital settings is conducted. Within the wider discourse of fiscal restraint on health care spending, professional nursing has cast its disciplined eyes on details of the nurse‐patient relationship for the ostensible purpose of repairing that which is treated as individual failings of nurses to practise in ways prescribed by nursing theories. Set aside in this approach to the so‐called ‘problems’ of nursing practice (...) has been an examination of the conditions within which nurses come in contact with patients, and a critical recognition that such contacts represent skilled accomplishments of social action. In this paper, these conditions are treated as resources available to both nurses and patients to generate accounts for the nurse's presence as well as the nurse's absence. Examples from an ethnographic study of nursing practice are used to illustrate how the spaces operating between nurses and patients are not empty voids but aresocialspaces through which particular meanings about nursing care can be conveyed. (shrink)

In 1759, at the height of the Seven Years' War, when Great Britain was suffering a series of military reversals, Montagu considered his country's plight in an historical context formed by the study of five ancient republics: Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Carthage, and Rome. Montagu's focus on the ancient republics gives his contribution a distinctive twist to the chorus of voices lamenting Britain's decline, and his analysis exerted influence in three momentous eighteenth-century crises: the Seven Years' War, the American War of (...) Independence, and the French Revolution. This is the first modern edition of Montagu's work. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713 -1776) was the son of a wealthy British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He was a student of oriental languages at the University of Leiden, which apparently proved useful during the peace negotiations at Aix-la-Chapelle which concluded the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on English literature from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. He is the editor of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (2012) for Cambridge University Press. (shrink)

If Kant's account of rights had continued the "early modern Natural Law tradition", basing rights on some notion of human flourishing, there would be no difficulty about including socio-economic rights for the needy in his theory. However, his division of moral philosophy into Rechtslehre and Tugendlehre limits Rechtspflichten to duties that a moral agent can be coerced to fulfill. If a state is to give the needy statutory rights, the justification for using coercion on its citizens cannot be that they (...) have a duty of virtue to assist the needy. In order to determine whether such a justification can be found, the one innate socio-economic right Kant admits, a child's right to be cared for and educated, is examined and found to be a right against its parents, not against the state. Kant does, however, hold that a state should establish institutions to provide for abandoned children and for the poor in general. His justification for a state's use of coercion with regard to such statutory rights is considered and a criterion is suggested for the possible consent of its non-virtuous citizens to proposed measures for assistance to the needy. It is suggested that if advocates of aid to the needy cannot justify their proposals by such a criterion they will have to provide a very different account of rights than Kant gives in his Rechtslehre , which is concerned with the moral permissibility of using coercion. Wenn Kants Lehre von den subjektiven Rechten nichts anderes wäre als eine Fortsetzung der "ihr vorangehenden modernen Naturrechtstradition" und die subjektiven Rechte infolgedessen auf das eine oder andere Konzept von menschlichem Wohlergehen gestützt hätte, dann wäre es nicht sonderlich schwierig, sozio-ökonomische Rechte für die Bedürftigen in diese Lehre einzubauen. Nun schränkt Kants Einteilung der Moralphilosophie in Rechtslehre und Tugendlehre den Begriff der Rechtspflicht allerdings auf diejenigen Pflichten ein, zu deren Erfüllung ein Mensch gezwungen werden kann. Deshalb kann, wenn ein Staat den Bedürftigen durch ein positives Gesetz irgendwelche Rechte auf Hilfe gewährt, die Rechtfertigung der Anwendung von staatlichem Zwang nicht darin gesucht werden, daß die dadurch in Anspruch genommenen Personen die Tugendpflicht haben, die Bedürftigen zu unterstützen. Um festzustellen, ob sich staatlicher Zwang in bezug auf solche Hilfspflichten überhaupt rechtfertigen läßt, erörtert der Beitrag das Recht des Kindes auf Fürsorge und Ausbildung als das eine und einzige angeborene sozio-ökonomische Recht, das Kant akzeptiert. Freilich ist das Recht des Kindes ein Recht gegen seine Eltern und nicht gegen den Staat. Gleichwohl nimmt Kant an, daß der Staat Einrichtungen schaffen sollte, die für verlassene Kinder und für die Armen im allgemeinen zu sorgen haben. Der Beitrag untersucht die Rechtfertigung, die Kant für die Anwendung von staatlichem Zwang zur Durchsetzung solcher positiv-gesetzlicher Rechte gibt, und arbeitet die Gründe dafür heraus, warum der nicht tugendhafte Staatsbürger in die vorgesehenen Hilfsmaßnahmen für die Bedürftigen einwilligen könnte. Wenn sich die Verfechter von Hilfsmaßnahmen für die Bedürftigen außerstande sehen, ihre Vorschläge auf Gründe dieser Art zu stützen, dann werden sie mit einem Konzept von subjektivem Recht aufwarten müssen, das sich von dem Konzept Kants von Recht und Rechtslehre , bei dem es allein um die moralische Erlaubtheit von Zwangsmaßnahmen geht, ganz erheblich unterscheidet. (shrink)

"Multiverse" cosmologies imagine our universe as just one of a vast number of others. While this idea has captivated philosophy, religion, and literature for millennia, it is now being considered as a scientific hypothesis--with different models emerging from cosmology, quantum mechanics, and string theory. Beginning with ancient Atomist and Stoic philosophies, Mary-Jane Rubenstein links contemporary models of the multiverse to their forerunners and explores the reasons for their recent appearance. One concerns the so-called fine-tuning of the universe: nature's constants (...) are so delicately calibrated that it seems they have been set just right to allow life to emerge. For some thinkers, these "fine-tunings" are evidence of the existence of God; for others, however, and for most physicists, "God" is an insufficient scientific explanation. Hence the allure of the multiverse: if all possible worlds exist somewhere, then like monkeys hammering out Shakespeare, one universe is bound to be suitable for life. Of course, this hypothesis replaces God with an equally baffling article of faith: the existence of universes beyond, before, or after our own, eternally generated yet forever inaccessible to observation or experiment. In their very efforts to sidestep metaphysics, theoretical physicists propose multiverse scenarios that collide with it and even produce counter-theological narratives. Far from invalidating multiverse hypotheses, Rubenstein argues, this interdisciplinary collision actually secures their scientific viability. We may therefore be witnessing a radical reconfiguration of physics, philosophy, and religion in the modern turn to the multiverse. (shrink)

In C.S. Lewis's science fiction parable Perelandra was a planet which had no solid ground. At all times the floating landscape was continually swirling and moving, chasms would appear where a minute before there had been safe standing. The rational beings who lived there hopped nimbly on to another little island when the one on which they stood disappeared under their feet. They were used to it and took it for granted that nothing was certain. The visitor from our planet (...) had to learn a completely new way of existence. But where did he get his idea of certainty in a fixed environment? It is more plausible that uncertainty is normal and the whole idea of certainty an illusion. Today gives an opportunity to reflect on how people deal with skepticism, doubt and uncertainty.The questions apply to a current debate in the UK on risk. Opinion polls constantly reveal that the public lacks trust in government, and particularly it does not trust the government to reveal the information needed to assess important risks. From which the risk analysts conclude that the government should grant access to information more freely and encourage enquiry. They believe that openness would foster a better understanding on the part of the public which at present does not know what to believe. More information would create certainty, more certainty and the public would trust its spokesmen, unreasonable fears would be calmed. This is the advice of an expert enquiry.Certainty is not a mood, or a feeling, it is an institution: this is my thesis. Certainty is only possible because doubt is blocked institutionally: most individual decisions about risk are taken under pressure from institutions. If we recognize more uncertainty now, it will be because of things that have happened to the institutional underpinning of our beliefs. And that is what we ought to be studying. In my student days the hottest controversies in anthropology were about why `other people' — that is people not living in advanced capitalist society — had certainty about their absurd beliefs.When trying to explain their misfortunes, why did they neglect the physical and scientific evidence, and draw instead on their beliefs in spirits, magic, and taboos? How could they be so obstinate in error? Anthropologists spent their energies on defending the allegedly irrational beliefs of other people, and I shall continue the tradition. (shrink)

This paper investigates the exemplarity of medicine in Foucault's analyses of knowledge generally. By tracing the development of his concept of power and its relation to knowledge, it offers an account of Foucault's unconventional philosophical project. Finally, it specifies Foucault's strategy for undermining processes of normalisation.

Litotes, “a figure of speech in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary” has had some tough reviews. For Pope and Swift, litotes—stock examples include “no mean feat”, “no small problem”, and “not bad at all”—is “the peculiar talent of Ladies, Whisperers, and Backbiters”; for Orwell, it is a means to affect “an appearance of profundity” that we can deport from English “by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit (...) across a not ungreen field.” But such ridicule is not without equivocation, given that litotes, or “logical” double negation, may or may not be semantically redundant. When the negation of a logical contrary yields an unexcluded middle, it contributes to expressive power: someone who is not unhappy may not be happy either, and an occurrence may not be infrequent without being frequent. But if something is not possible, what can it be but possible? Why does Crashaw’s “not impossible she” survive rhetorically while Orwell’s “not unsmall rabbit” is doomed? How is Robbie being “not not friends” with Mary on 7th Heaven distinct from being friends with her, if not not-p reduces to p? The key is recognizing in litotes a corollary of MaxContrary, the tendency for contradictory sentential negation ¬p to strengthen pragmatically to a contrary ©p, as when the formal contradictory Fr. “Il ne faut pas partir” is reinterpreted as expressing a contrary. Just as the Law of Excluded Middle can apply where it “shouldn’t”, resulting in pragmatically presupposed disjunctions between semantic contraries, so that “p v ©p” amounts to an instance of “p v ¬p”, the Law of Double Negation can fail to apply where it “should”. When not not-p conveys ¬©p, the negation of a virtual contrary, the middle between p and not-p is no longer excluded, rendering the Fregean dictum that “Wrapping up a thought in double negation does not alter its truth value” not unproblematic. (shrink)

Giving Voice To Values (GVV) serves as a framework to teach individuals methods to speak up when they witness actions that are contrary to their professional and personal values. This essay illustrates how GVV serves as a catalyst to advance both research and teaching activities.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.3 (2002) 319-328 [Access article in PDF] Introduction Mary-Kay Gamel Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousai (Women at the Thesmophoria Festival) takes its title from an important three-day religious festival celebrated by women in honor of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. In this play, the playwright Euripides learns that the women of Athens plan to use the occasion of this women-only gathering to put him on (...) trial for the negative depictions of women in his plays. Euripides convinces a relative of his to dress in female costume, infiltrate the festival, and find out what the women are up to. The plot is quickly uncovered and the intruder captured. After several rescue schemes based on scenes from Euripides' tragedies fail, the playwright wins his relative's freedom by agreeing never to slander women again.Thesmophoriazousai has strong characters, a lively plot, and themes significant and timely both then and now—the relation between gender and performance, the representation of women in the media, an artist's responsibility. Yet it has received little attention from scholars and realized even fewer productions. The most obvious reason for neglect is the play's lack of explicit political commentary. Dover, for example, thinks it "leaves us with nothing difficult to think about... it has nothing to say about making peace" (1972, 169). The play contains considerable literary and dramatic criticism, in the form of both explicit commentary and parody, but this aspect has been far less studied than the contest between the tragedians in Aristophanes' Frogs. Some critics think the play weak compared to other plays of Aristophanes. Lever, for example, finds the conflict "not so clear-cut" since "the idea at stake... is only the stepping-off point for the fun that follows" (1956, 120). There are exceptions to this neglect. Norwood ranks Thesmophoriazousai far above Lysistrata: "for dazzling wit and irresistibly laughable farce combined this play is perhaps the world's finest masterpiece... glorious foolery suffused by a thrice-refined intellectual virtuosity that never misses a point, never overstresses it" (1931, 253-54). Rau (1967) gives the tragic parodies their due; in his substantial chapter on Thesmophoriazousai, Moulton declares it "skillfully composed and unified" (1981, 142); Bierl (2001) provides a detailed study of the role of the chorus. Yet the inattention continues: [End Page 319] Harriott (1986), Reckford (1987), and Segal (2001) mention the play only briefly.The years 2000 and 2001 seemed like a promising time to reconsider Thesmophoriazousai. The play's obscenity, which Norwood thought the only cause of its neglect, is no longer an obstacle. Recent scholarship on the religious and ritual context of Athenian drama helps us understand the role of the Thesmophoria and women's ritual in the play. And the rise of feminist criticism offers new perspectives on its portrayal of gender relations. Whitman unambiguously uses gender to denigrate the play: "These women are scarcely the warm wives and mothers of the Lysistrata, but rather a pack of vengeful furies... Femininity, whether real or assumed, is under a somewhat morbid cloud; by contrast, there is something genuinely refreshing about the masculinity of Mnesilochus [as he calls the Kinsman]... Comedy is virile, like Mnesilochus, and essentially truthful; tragedy is at best a hermaphroditic affair" (1964, 223-24). In a ground-breaking article first published in 1981, Zeitlin instead sees the play's connections between gender conflict and genre conflict—"the equivalence between intertextuality and intersexuality"—as the source of its power (1996, 375-416).Some feminists, however, question the function and effect of women's portrayal in Athenian plays written by males for male actors and possibly for an all-male audience. Zeitlin has argued that in Athenian tragedy, women are figures of male self-representation: "the self that is really at stake is to be identified with the male, while the woman is assigned the role of the radical other... functionally women are never an end in themselves, and nothing changes for them once they have lived out their drama on stage... they play the roles of catalysts, agents, instruments, blockers... and sometimes helpers or saviors for the male characters"... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.3 (2002) 319-328 [Access article in PDF] Introduction Mary-Kay Gamel Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousai (Women at the Thesmophoria Festival) takes its title from an important three-day religious festival celebrated by women in honor of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. In this play, the playwright Euripides learns that the women of Athens plan to use the occasion of this women-only gathering to put him on (...) trial for the negative depictions of women in his plays. Euripides convinces a relative of his to dress in female costume, infiltrate the festival, and find out what the women are up to. The plot is quickly uncovered and the intruder captured. After several rescue schemes based on scenes from Euripides' tragedies fail, the playwright wins his relative's freedom by agreeing never to slander women again.Thesmophoriazousai has strong characters, a lively plot, and themes significant and timely both then and now—the relation between gender and performance, the representation of women in the media, an artist's responsibility. Yet it has received little attention from scholars and realized even fewer productions. The most obvious reason for neglect is the play's lack of explicit political commentary. Dover, for example, thinks it "leaves us with nothing difficult to think about... it has nothing to say about making peace" (1972, 169). The play contains considerable literary and dramatic criticism, in the form of both explicit commentary and parody, but this aspect has been far less studied than the contest between the tragedians in Aristophanes' Frogs. Some critics think the play weak compared to other plays of Aristophanes. Lever, for example, finds the conflict "not so clear-cut" since "the idea at stake... is only the stepping-off point for the fun that follows" (1956, 120). There are exceptions to this neglect. Norwood ranks Thesmophoriazousai far above Lysistrata: "for dazzling wit and irresistibly laughable farce combined this play is perhaps the world's finest masterpiece... glorious foolery suffused by a thrice-refined intellectual virtuosity that never misses a point, never overstresses it" (1931, 253-54). Rau (1967) gives the tragic parodies their due; in his substantial chapter on Thesmophoriazousai, Moulton declares it "skillfully composed and unified" (1981, 142); Bierl (2001) provides a detailed study of the role of the chorus. Yet the inattention continues: [End Page 319] Harriott (1986), Reckford (1987), and Segal (2001) mention the play only briefly.The years 2000 and 2001 seemed like a promising time to reconsider Thesmophoriazousai. The play's obscenity, which Norwood thought the only cause of its neglect, is no longer an obstacle. Recent scholarship on the religious and ritual context of Athenian drama helps us understand the role of the Thesmophoria and women's ritual in the play. And the rise of feminist criticism offers new perspectives on its portrayal of gender relations. Whitman unambiguously uses gender to denigrate the play: "These women are scarcely the warm wives and mothers of the Lysistrata, but rather a pack of vengeful furies... Femininity, whether real or assumed, is under a somewhat morbid cloud; by contrast, there is something genuinely refreshing about the masculinity of Mnesilochus [as he calls the Kinsman]... Comedy is virile, like Mnesilochus, and essentially truthful; tragedy is at best a hermaphroditic affair" (1964, 223-24). In a ground-breaking article first published in 1981, Zeitlin instead sees the play's connections between gender conflict and genre conflict—"the equivalence between intertextuality and intersexuality"—as the source of its power (1996, 375-416).Some feminists, however, question the function and effect of women's portrayal in Athenian plays written by males for male actors and possibly for an all-male audience. Zeitlin has argued that in Athenian tragedy, women are figures of male self-representation: "the self that is really at stake is to be identified with the male, while the woman is assigned the role of the radical other... functionally women are never an end in themselves, and nothing changes for them once they have lived out their drama on stage... they play the roles of catalysts, agents, instruments, blockers... and sometimes helpers or saviors for the male characters"... (shrink)

This paper is primarily an attempt to study the Homeric evidence on houses, particularly on the , in relation to the relevant remains. The reverse procedure, illuminating the archaeological evidence by references to Homer, is a hazardous one, as we shall see. It is often unclear just what is represented by the descriptions in the poems, and what period, if any, the things described belong to. I shall be concerned with these questions here. Are the houses in the poems Mycenaean: (...) genuine traditions from the period in which the stories are set? Or are they Geometric: contemporary? Or a memory of some time in between? Or a mixture? We know so little about the development of the epic tradition that any possible source of information is worth pursuing. (shrink)