Pandora's Senses: The Feminine Character of the Ancient Text (Wisconsin Studies in Classics)

The notorious image of Pandora haunts mythology: a woman created as punishment for the crimes of man, she is the bearer of hope yet also responsible for the Earth’s desolation. She binds together perpetuating dichotomies that underlie the most fundamental aspects of the Western canon: beauty and evil, body and soul, depth and superficiality, truth and lie. Speaking in multiplicity, Pandora emerges as the first sign of female complexity. In this compelling study, Vered Lev Kenaan offers a radical revision of the Greek myth of the first woman. She argues that Pandora leaves a decisive mark on ancient poetics and shows that we can unravel the profound impact of Pandora’s image once we recognize that Pandora embodies the very idea of the ancient literary text. Locating the myth of the first woman right at the heart of feminist interrogation of gender and textuality, Pandora’s Senses moves beyond a feminist critique of masculine hegemony by challenging the reading of Pandora as a one-dimensional embodiment of the misogynist vision of the feminine. Uncovering Pandora as a textual principle operating outside of the feminine, Lev Kenaan shows the centrality of this iconic figure among the poetics of such central genres as the cosmological and didactic epic, the Platonic dialogue, the love elegy, and the ancient novel. Pandora’s Senses innovates our understanding of gender as a critical lens through which to view ancient literature. Contents ......Page 8 Preface......Page 10 Introduction......Page 16 Pandora, Once Again......Page 30 The Genealogy of Pandora ......Page 37 Misogynist Responses to Pandora ......Page 44 Pandora's Wonder......Page 49 2. Pandora and the Myth of Otherness......Page 61 From Mount Helicon to a Poetics of Otherness......Page 63 The Fantasy of Symbiosis between Men and Gods......Page 69 Ambiguities of Identity: The Case of Brothers ......Page 76 The Loss of Sameness and the Birth of Eros ......Page 81 The Didactic Imperative: Learn the Other ......Page 86 3. The Socratic Pandora......Page 89 Woman is the Ideal Listener ......Page 90 The Naked Truth and the Adorned Lie ......Page 94 The Seductions of Pandora ......Page 99 Socrates and Theodote ......Page 103 Socrates and Pandora......Page 109 Pandora's Voice......Page 116 From the Effeminate Elegy to the Feminine Text......Page 122 The Erotodidactic Persona ......Page 127 Sappho's Lasciviousness ......Page 133 The Lascivious Text ......Page 138 5. Feminine Subjectivity and the Self-Contradicting Text......Page 144 Ars and Remedia: Metadiscourse, Language Games, and the Problem of Sincerity ......Page 145 The Palinodic Structure ......Page 153 Palinode and Narrative......Page 155 Pandora's Lie ......Page 158 A Girl's Rape and the Birth of Feminine Subjectivity ......Page 163 Feminine Weaving: Text, Textile, Body, Pain ......Page 174 Helen's Web ......Page 178 Listening Like a Woman: Penelope's Tears ......Page 183 Odysseus Weeps Like a Woman ......Page 186 Xanthippe's Tears ......Page 189 Epilogue......Page 200 Notes......Page 204 Bibliography......Page 236 Index......Page 250 The notorious image of Pandora haunts mythology: a woman created as punishment for the crimes of man, she is the bearer of hope yet also responsible for the Earth’s desolation. She binds together perpetuating dichotomies that underlie the most fundamental aspects of the Western canon:  beauty and evil, body and soul, depth and superficiality, truth and lie. Speaking in multiplicity, Pandora emerges as the first sign of female complexity.
     In this compelling study, Vered Lev Kenaan offers a radical revision of the Greek myth of the first woman. She argues that Pandora leaves a decisive mark on ancient poetics and shows that we can unravel the profound impact of Pandora’s image once we recognize that Pandora embodies the very idea of the ancient literary text. Locating the myth of the first woman right at the heart of feminist interrogation of gender and textuality, Pandora’s Senses moves beyond a feminist critique of masculine hegemony by challenging the reading of Pandora as a one-dimensional embodiment of the misogynist vision of the feminine. Uncovering Pandora as a textual principle operating outside of the feminine, Lev Kenaan shows the centrality of this iconic figure among the poetics of such central genres as the cosmological and didactic epic, the Platonic dialogue, the love elegy, and the ancient novel. Pandora’s Senses innovates our understanding of gender as a critical lens through which to view ancient literature. "The notorious image of Pandora haunts mythology. A woman created as a disastrous gift for humanity, she binds together perpetuating dichotomies that underlie the most fundamental aspects of the Western canon: beauty and evil, body and soul, depth and superficiality, truth and lie. In this compelling study, Vered Lev Kenaan offers a radical revision of the Greek myth of the first woman by showing that Pandora embodies the very idea of the ancient literary text. Locating the myth of the first woman right at the heart of feminist interrogation of gender and textuality, Pandora's Senses shows the centrality of this iconic figure among the poetics of the cosmological and didactic epic, the Platonic dialogue, the love elegy, and the ancient novel."--Jacket Offering a radical revision of the Greek myth of the first woman, the author argues that Pandora leaves a decisive mark on ancient poetics and shows that we can unravel the profound impact of Pandora's image once we recognize that she embodies the very id