Beyond the Limits of Lyric: The Female Poet of the Hymn to Demeter
This essay investigates the possibility that the Homeric Hymn to Demeter was for entertainment composed by a woman at the Thesmophoria at Eleusis. Arguments are based on the Hymn’s intensely female subject matter and subject positions, and considerations of an appropriate audience and performance co...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Centre
[2005]
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| In: |
Kernos
Year: 2005, Volume: 18, Pages: 17-41 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This essay investigates the possibility that the Homeric Hymn to Demeter was for entertainment composed by a woman at the Thesmophoria at Eleusis. Arguments are based on the Hymn’s intensely female subject matter and subject positions, and considerations of an appropriate audience and performance context for such female concerns. These concerns are found to be identical to those of the female lyricists Sappho, Korinna, Nossis and Erinna. Composition by a woman for a female audience explains at last the uniquely humiliating treatment which Zeus receives in the Hymn. Other peculiarities find their explanations also: why there are no references to the Hymn’s version of its myth until the post-Classical period, for example, or the unusual features of the Hymn’s traditional diction. While perforce not conclusive, these arguments should permit us to abandon the unthinking assumption of a male author for this thoroughly female composition. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Kernos
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.4000/kernos.868 |