A Forum of Their Own: Rhetoric, Religion, and Female Participation in Ancient Athens.

Recently, rhetoricians have been trying to explain the absence of women from the history of rhetoric by locating female rhetoricians in classical era canonical texts. This effort, similar in intent to the movement towards redefining the literary canon, challenges the traditional Western rhetorical canon to create a more inclusive and accurate representation of its history. It is time to call for a new definition of rhetoric, one that broadens its scope beyond the modern interpretations of Platonic and Aristotelian traditions of public agonistic argumentation among peers. Within the realm of this new understanding of rhetoric will be the discourse practices of those not permitted regular participation in the traditional forum. Scholars should consider the discursive practices outside the "agora" under contemporary perceptions of rhetoric, and by doing so rewrite rhetorical history from classical times to the present, including a consideration of the rhetoric of the oppressed. In this case, the oppressed groups are wives and/or relatives of legitimate male citizens. In ancient Athens, any speech by women was grounded in the premise that they were of inferior status addressing an audience of superiors, which prohibited their ability to argue publicly. In fact, wives of legitimate citizens were so secluded from the public that they were prohibited from negotiating in the marketplace. The religious expressivist participation they were permitted (such as the cult of the goddess Athena) provided them with one of their only forums for discourse. (Contains 43 references.) (TB)