Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being (Women And Culture Series)

Traces the development of the Greek hierarchical view of life that continues to permeate Western society | In Centaurs and Amazons, Page duBois offers a prehistory of hierarchy. Using structural anthropology, symbolic analysis, and recent literary theory, she demonstrates a shift in Greek thought from the fifth to the fourth century B.C. that had a profound influence upon subsequent Western culture and politics. Through an analysis of mythology, drama, sculpture, architecture, and Greek vase painting, duBois documents the transition from a system of thought that organized the experience of difference in terms of polarity and analogy to one based upon a relatively rigid hierarchical scheme. This was the beginning of "the great chain of being," the philosophical construct that all life was organized in minute gradations of superiority and inferiority. This scheme, in various guises, has continued to influence philosophical and political thought. The author's intelligent and discriminating use of scholarship from various fields makes Centaurs and Amazons an impressive interdisciplinary study of interest to classicists, feminist scholars, historians, art historians, anthropologists, and political scientists. Offers a prehistory of hierarchy. Using structural anthropology, symbolic analysis, and recent literary theory, Page duBois demonstrates a shift in Greek thought from the fifth to the fourth century BC that had a profound influence upon subsequent Western culture and politics. Frontmatter Introduction (page 1) I Centaurs and Amazons (page 25) II Centauromachy/Amazonomachy (page 49) III Greeks and Barbarians (page 78) IV Humans and Animals (page 95) V Men and Women (page 110) VI Hierarchy (page 129) Conclusion (page 150) Index (page 153)