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.

About the Author
Emily Hauser is a senior lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter and was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She coedited Reading Poetry, Writing Genre, and is the author of a critically acclaimed trilogy of novels that reimagines the women of Greek myth: For the Most Beautiful, For the Winner, and For the Immortal.

Reviews
"A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year"
"Provocative. . . .A brilliant book."---Shadi Barsch, Times Literary Supplement
"An exciting and elegant survey of the entire ancient Greek literary tradition as a male construction, [forcing] the reader to rethink many common assumptions about "women's" poetry from antiquity to today.... An important book for all who are interested in Greek poetry and gender in antiquity and beyond.-Choice"



Book Information
ISBN 9780691201078
Author Emily Hauser
Format Hardback
Page Count 376
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press