Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Ordering women in Hesiod's Catalogue
- 2 The beginning and end of the Catalogue of Women and its relation to Hesiod
- 3 Gods among men? The social and political dynamics of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
- 4 Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
- 5 Mestra at Athens: Hesiod fr. 43 and the poetics of panhellenism
- 6 A catalogue within a catalogue: Helen's suitors in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (frr. 196–204)
- 7 Pulp epic: the Catalogue and the Shield
- 8 The Megalai Ehoiai: a survey of the fragments
- 9 Ordered from the Catalogue: Pindar, Bacchylides, and Hesiodic genealogical poetry
- 10 The Hesiodic Catalogue and Hellenistic poetry
- 11 From genealogy to Catalogue: the Hellenistic adaptation of the Hesiodic catalogue form
- 12 The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Latin poetry
- 13 Or such as Ovid's Metamorphoses …
- Bibliography
- Index of passages discussed
- General index
3 - Gods among men? The social and political dynamics of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Ordering women in Hesiod's Catalogue
- 2 The beginning and end of the Catalogue of Women and its relation to Hesiod
- 3 Gods among men? The social and political dynamics of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
- 4 Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
- 5 Mestra at Athens: Hesiod fr. 43 and the poetics of panhellenism
- 6 A catalogue within a catalogue: Helen's suitors in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (frr. 196–204)
- 7 Pulp epic: the Catalogue and the Shield
- 8 The Megalai Ehoiai: a survey of the fragments
- 9 Ordered from the Catalogue: Pindar, Bacchylides, and Hesiodic genealogical poetry
- 10 The Hesiodic Catalogue and Hellenistic poetry
- 11 From genealogy to Catalogue: the Hellenistic adaptation of the Hesiodic catalogue form
- 12 The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Latin poetry
- 13 Or such as Ovid's Metamorphoses …
- Bibliography
- Index of passages discussed
- General index
Summary
On what occasions was the Catalogue of Women performed? What might it have meant for the audiences for whom it was performed? These are questions for which there is no scholarly consensus: the tattered state of this once monumental and influential poem seems to have warded off most attempts at sustained speculation. These questions invite no conclusive answers, but nor are they the kind that will or should go away, and at the outset I would like to acknowledge the speculative nature of the conclusions this article will draw about locating the Catalogue in its wider archaic cultural context. In what follows, I hope to demonstrate an aspect of the Catalogue that has not been fully appreciated, its strong intertextual relationship with sympotic poetry, and to pursue the possible consequences – social, political and performative – of this intertextuality.
Given that the symposium has dominated studies of the politics and poetics of archaic Greece for the last two decades, it might have seemed inevitable for a sympotic reading of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women to emerge. That it has not seems due to the fact that more obvious attributes of the Catalogue have destined it for other contexts of analysis: that of oral-formulaic poetry, the natural comparandum for an archaic hexameter poem. In what follows, I by no means deny the appropriateness of such comparisons; on the contrary, they are where we must begin; but with a poem like the Catalogue, very much sui generis, it is important to consider the possibility of multiple influences and generic fusion.
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- Information
- The Hesiodic Catalogue of WomenConstructions and Reconstructions, pp. 35 - 84Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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