| Popis: |
This book traces the image of the pregnant male in Greek literature as it evolved over the course of the classical period. The image - as deployed in myth and in metaphor - originated as a representation of paternity and, by extension,'authorship'of ideas, works of art, legislation, and the like. Only later, with its reception in philosophy in the early fourth century, did it also become a way to figure and negotiate the boundary between the sexes. The book considers a number of important moments in the evolution of the image: the masculinist embryological theory of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and other fifth century pre-Socratics; literary representations of the birth of Dionysus; the origin and functions of pregnancy as a metaphor in tragedy, comedy and works of some Sophists; and finally the redeployment of some of these myths and metaphors in Aristophanes'Assemblywomen and in Plato's Symposium and Theaetetus. |
