Gynaeceum

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Gynaeceum

(1) In ancient Greece, the women’s half of the rear part of a home, which included sleeping quarters for the masters and quarters for daughters and slave women.

(2) In the late Roman Empire and Byzantium, state or private workshops (primarily weaving shops), where both male and female slaves worked. The silk fabric and parchment gynaecea of Constantinople were famous until the tenth century.

gynaeceum

That part of a Greek house or a church reserved for women.

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References in periodicals archive ?

Djebar has no clear role there, having given up both the traditional role of the gynaeceum and the de-sexualized role of her father's confidante and companion.

In the Father's House: Language and Violence in the Work of Assia Djebar and Leila Sebbar/Babanin Evinde: Assia Djebar'in ve Leila Sebbar'in Yazilarinda Dil ve Siddet

(61) This location, adjacent to the northern women's aisle (the gynaeceum (62)) on the ground floor, indicates that their duties included general oversight or management of the gynaeceum, just as the Apostolic Constitutions prescribed for deaconesses in the early church.

(19.) According to Constantine, De ceremoniis 44 (35), for the feast of the Annunciation, the emperor, after visiting the skeuophylakion (where relics and vessels were kept, and the Gifts prepared), "passes through the narthex of the gynaeceum where the deaconesses of the Great Church have their customary place." Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos, Le livre des ceremonies, ed.

Female deacons in the Byzantine Church (1)

When he refers to the gynaeceum, Cornelius Nepos clearly envisions it as situated deep within the interior of the house: "But the situation is very different in Greece [from Rome].

Playing house: stage, space, and domesticity in Plautus's Mostellaria

Even in its long-drawn-out demise, the traditional gynaeceum may have exerted its influence through suggesting to wealthy householders that slavery represented a cost-effective solution to the competitive endeavours of display, entertainments and wearing rich clothes.

Ancillary evidence for the decline of medieval slavery

(73.) Johann Heinrich Feustking Gynaeceum haeretico fanaticum, oder, Historie und Beschreibung der falschen Prophetinnen, Quackerinnen, Schwarmerinnen und andern sectirischen und begeisterten Weibes-Personen, ed.

Problems and promises of Pietism research

In his discussion of the gynaeceum, or women's workshop, he argues that Yvain demonstrates the idea that "women worked at least part of the year in the open", while at the same time, he acknowledges the fictionality of Chretien's scene in the scale of the workshop: "Chretien's 300 girl workers ...