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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―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.
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.
376 pages, Hardcover
Published August 22, 2023
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About the author
Emily Hauser
12 books290 followersEmily Hauser is an award-winning ancient historian and the author of the acclaimed Golden Apple trilogy retelling the stories of the women of Greek myth. She has been featured on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour and The Guardian alongside Colm Tóibín and Natalie Haynes, and her novel For the Winner was listed among the "28 Best Books for Summer" in The Telegraph. Her latest book, Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, through the Women Written Out Of It, was an instant Times bestseller.
To find out more, visit her website: http://www.emilyhauser.com
To find out more, visit her website: http://www.emilyhauser.com
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 2, 2025
Hauser digs deep into the fragments of ancient Greek lit to sniff out a trail of gendered words for "poet." She shows how male poets (in a highly gendered and snarlingly divisive culture) commandeered words for "poet," locking them up in a cage which no female could attain entry. Hesiod, Homer, Plato, the whole bloody lot of them were in on it--a deliberate act of exclusion if Hauser is right. (I'm no expert, but her scholarship is very deep, very learned, very nuanced to the semantic under- and overtones of Ancient Greek, so I am buying her theory.) Not that women can be kept down--or out. We think of Sappho, of course--but look how the boys talked about her! She may have been beloved by the Muses, they said, but we aren't going to call her a poet. To learn how women overcame these cock-blockages and out-maneuvered their male counterparts, dig in! It's a studious and fascinating ride.
Displaying 1 of 1 review