Uploaded January 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In this second lecture of the Virgilio Lecture Series, titled “Women breastfeeding wolf cubs in Euripides’ Bacchae,” Adriana Cavarero examines the imagery around the theme of motherhood in Euripides’ Bacchae. In the Bacchae, there is a distinctive world that exalts the fertility of a female body embedded in a nature which consists of the proliferation and sustenance of the living. How can we understand this maternity, this act of nourishment, when women take to breastfeeding wolf cubs in the Bacchae, in a world outside of the tradition boundaries of domesticity?
In this second lecture of the Virgilio Lecture Series, titled “Women breastfeeding wolf cubs in Euripides’ Bacchae,” Adriana Cavarero examines the imagery around the theme of motherhood in Euripides’ Bacchae. In the Bacchae, there is a distinctive world that exalts the fertility of a female body embedded in a nature which consists of the proliferation and sustenance of the living. How can we understand this maternity, this act of nourishment, when women take to breastfeeding wolf cubs in the Bacchae, in a world outside of the tradition boundaries of domesticity?
