How Women Became Poets : A Gender History of Greek Literature

**How the idea of the author was born in the battleground of gender**When Sappho sang her songs, the only word that existed to describe a poet was a male one—__aoidos__, or “singer-man.” The most famous woman poet of ancient Greece, whose craft was one of words, had no words with which to talk about who she was and what she did. In __How Women Became Poets__, Emily Hauser rewrites the story of Greek literature as one of gender, arguing that the ways the Greeks talked about their identity as poets constructed, played with, and broke down gender expectations that literature was for men alone. Bringing together recent studies in ancient authorship, gender, and performativity, Hauser offers a new history of classical literature that redefines the canon as a constant struggle to be heard through, and sometimes despite, gender.Women, as Virginia Woolf recognized, need rooms of their own in order to write. So too, have women writers through history needed a name to describe what it is they do. Hauser traces the invention of that name in ancient Greece, exploring the archaeology of the gendering of the poet. She follows ancient Greek poets, philosophers, and historians as they developed and debated the vocabulary for authorship on the battleground of gender—the building up and reinforcing of the word for male poet, followed by the creation, in response, of a language with which to describe women who write. Crucially, Hauser reinserts women into the traditionally all-male canon of Greek literature, arguing for the centrality of their role in shaping ideas around authorship and literary production. How the idea of the author was born in the battleground of gender When Sappho sang her songs, the only word that existed to describe a poet was a male one— aoidos , or “singer-man.” The most famous woman poet of ancient Greece, whose craft was one of words, had no words with which to talk about who she was and what she did. In How Women Became Poets , Emily Hauser rewrites the story of Greek literature as one of gender, arguing that the ways the Greeks talked about their identity as poets constructed, played with, and broke down gender expectations that literature was for men alone. Bringing together recent studies in ancient authorship, gender, and performativity, Hauser offers a new history of classical literature that redefines the canon as a constant struggle to be heard through, and sometimes despite, gender. Women, as Virginia Woolf recognized, need rooms of their own in order to write. So too, have women writers through history needed a name to describe what it is they do. Hauser traces the invention of that name in ancient Greece, exploring the archaeology of the gendering of the poet. She follows ancient Greek poets, philosophers, and historians as they developed and debated the vocabulary for authorship on the battleground of gender—the building up and reinforcing of the word for male poet, followed by the creation, in response, of a language with which to describe women who write. Crucially, Hauser reinserts women into the traditionally all-male canon of Greek literature, arguing for the centrality of their role in shaping ideas around authorship and literary production. How the idea of the author was born in the battleground of gender When Sappho sang her songs, the only word that existed to describe a poet was a male one— aoidos , or "singer-man." The most famous woman poet of ancient Greece, whose craft was one of words, had no words with which to talk about who she was and what she did. In How Women Became Poets , Emily Hauser rewrites the story of Greek literature as one of gender, arguing that the ways the Greeks talked about their identity as poets constructed, played with, and broke down gender expectations that literature was for men alone. Bringing together recent studies in ancient authorship, gender, and performativity, Hauser offers a new history of classical literature that redefines the canon as a constant struggle to be heard through, and sometimes despite, gender. Women, as Virginia Woolf recognized, need rooms of their own in order to write. So, too, have women writers through history needed a name to describe what it is they do. Hauser traces the invention of that name in ancient Greece, exploring the archaeology of the gendering of the poet. She follows ancient Greek poets, philosophers, and historians as they developed and debated the vocabulary for authorship on the battleground of gender—building up and reinforcing the word for male poet, then in response creating a language with which to describe women who write. Crucially, Hauser reinserts women into the traditionally all-male canon of Greek literature, arguing for the centrality of their role in shaping ideas around authorship and literary production. "This book that shows how ancient poets broke the silence of literary gender norms to express their own voices, and thus illuminating long neglected discussions of gender in the ancient world. In How Women Became Poets, Emily Hauser provides a startling new history of classical literature that redefines the canon as a constant struggle to be heard through, and sometimes despite, gender. By bringing together recent studies in ancient authorship, gender, and performativity, Hauser offers gendered lens to issues of voice and identity in classical literature and poetry. What emerges from this is a new literary history that reframes the authors of classical literature as both enforcing and exploring gender, and shows for the first time how women broke the silence of gender norms around literary production to express their own voices. By revisiting traditional assumptions about the canon of Greek literature, and highlighting the articulated construction of masculinity in Greek poetic texts, the book places ancient women poets back onto center stage as principal actors in the drama of the debate around what it means to create poetry. Much of the importance of this work is adding in female authors to the history of Greek literature, both well-known and marginal, while demonstrating how the idea of the author was born in the battleground of gender"-- Provided by publisher Contents 9 Note on Transliterations and Texts 11 Acknowledgments 13 List of Abbreviations 15 Introduction: A Name of One’s Own 21 Part I: Lyre. The Singer-Man: Making Poets Male from the Be 45 1. The Invention of the Singer-Man in Homer 45 2. Mastering the Muses in Hesiod 66 3. The Instruments of Song in the Homeric Hymns 82 Part II: Tool. The Man-Maker: Male Poets Making Male Citizens 103 4. How to Make Men in Aristophanes 103 5. The (Gendered) Problem of Plato and the Poets 142 Part III: Wreath. The Female Homer: Toward a Language for Women Poets 185 6. Into the Otherworld: Singing Women in Euripides 185 7. A Woman, or a Poet? Words for Women Poets, from Herodotus to Antipater 211 Part IV: Bird. A New Kind of Language: Women Poets in Their Own Words 251 8. Mother Sappho: Creating Women Poets 251 9. Bards and Birds: Old Terms on Her Terms, from Sappho to Nossis 278 Conclusion: Beyond Words 306 References 311 Index of Passages 355 General Index 367