Woman's Songs in Ancient Greece

By Anne L. Klinck
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Hardcover : 9780773534483, 312 pages, December 2008
Paperback : 9780773534490, 312 pages, December 2008
Ebook (PDF) : 9780773577213, 312 pages, December 2008

Description

Through a balanced discussion of poetry as performance, relevant kinds and genres of poetry, the definition and scope of "woman's song" as a mode, partheneia (maidens' songs) and the girls' chorus, lyric in the drama, echoes and imitations of archaic woman's song in Hellenistic poetry, and inferences about the differences between male and female authors, Klinck demonstrates that woman's song is ultimately best understood as the product of a male-dominated culture but that feminine stereotypes, while refined by skilful male poets, are interrogated and shifted by female poets.