Signs of Cleopatra

Reading an Icon Historically

by Mary Hamer

Image coming soon

Extent: 192 pages

Publisher: University of Exeter Press

Subjects: Ancient Egypt, Classical Studies

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(December 2009)

ISBN: 9780859898096

Price: $12.00

Out of stock


This
study chooses a number of key moments from European history in which
writers and painters re-imagined Cleopatra. In doing so Mary Hamer takes
her readers on a pleasurable intellectual treasure hunt. By restoring
these works to their original context – political, philosophical and
aesthetic – the author opens up unexpected new readings of images and
texts which had previously appeared self-explanatory.” “Using detailed
analysis Hamer traces attempts to reconfigure attitudes to women and
power, to women and sexuality and to desire itself. In the case of
Tiepolo’s Cleopatra, the Queen is linked with the desire for knowledge;
in post-Revolutionary France, with a lost political freedom. In the new
concluding essay she explores what is at stake in our own day, in the
battle to define Cleopatra’s race.

  • By (author) Mary Hamer