Weaving Truth: Essays on Language and the Female in Greek Thought, by Ann Bergren
The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce the online publication of Weaving Truth: Essays on Language and the Female in Greek Thought, by Ann Bergren on the CHS website.
“What if truth were a woman?” asked Nietzsche. In ancient Greek thought, truth in language has a special relation to the female by virtue of her pre-eminent art-form–the one Freud believed was even invented by women–weaving. The essays in this book explore the implications of this nexus: language, the female, weaving, and the construction of truth.
The Homeric bard–male, to be sure–inherits from Indo-European culture the designation of his poetry as a weaving, the female’s art. Like her tapestries, his “texts” can suspend, reverse, and re-order time. He can weave the content from one world into the interstices of another.
The male poet shares the ambiguous power of the female Muses whose speech he channels. “We can say false things like to real things, and whenever we wish, we can utter the truth.”
A printed copy of the book is available through Harvard University Press.
Scholars interested in this work might also be interested in:
- Anna Bonifazi, Homer’s Versicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Word-Making
- Douglas Frame, The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic
- Gregory Nagy, Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens
- Gregory Nagy, Short Writings, Volume 1
- Laura Slatkin, The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays
- Olga Levaniouk, Eve of the Festival: Making Myth in Odyssey 19