Mulier inopia et cognatorum neglegentia coacta: Thornton Wilder's Tragic Take on The Woman of Andros

This chapter delves into the intertextual connections between Terence's Andria and Thornton Wilder's The Woman of Andros. An analysis of Wilder's novelistic reworking of the play will deepen our understanding of how his aesthetic, ethical, and poetical convictions manifest themselves in his prose. At the same time, an awareness of what Wilder saw in Terence's Andria can help broaden our appreciation of elements within the comedy that may be subtle, but can still be detected in its original Latin. There is thus clearly a request contained in the opening of The Woman of Andros to "reflect upon the nature of allusive activity" and to explore in what his improvements consist.