| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
x, 306 pages ; 23 cm |
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text txt rdacontent |
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unmediated n rdamedia |
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volume nc rdacarrier |
| Series |
Oxford studies in classical literature and gender theory |
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Oxford studies in classical literature and gender theory.
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| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-279) and indexes. |
| Summary |
"Greek sources, postdating Pythagoras by hundreds of years, suggest that women played an important part in his school. Pseudonymous texts attributed to Theano, Pythagoras' disciple or wife, and other female Pythagoreans, have also come down to us. Such testimonies are usually discussed as evidence for life in Pythagorean communities. Pythagorean Women Philosophers maps an entire web of textual tradition to offer something more complex: a rewriting of Greek philosophical history so as to include female intellectuals.0Bringing together little-known testimonies to women's contributions to Pythagorean thought, this book shows what modern readers may learn from them. Such testimonies first surface in fragments of Peripatetic writers, and continued to shape the reception of Pythagoreanism until the seventh century CE. They include sayings, philosophical treatises, and letters attributed to Pythagorean women, and form a vital undercurrent of the Pythagorean tradition. Against the tendency to discuss these0testimonies in terms of their validity as historical accounts of the life in Pythagorean communities, Dutsch contends that their value lies not in what they may represent but in what they are-accounts of Greek philosophical history that emphatically include women. Consequently, the book shifts attention from texts as historical testimonies to texts as literary artefacts engaged in creating a vision of the past, producing meaning in dialogue with other texts, especially the dialogues of Plato. Pythagorean women emerge from this overview not as individuals but as potent cultural icons that exist in the Greek culture's evolving imaginarium, challenging us to rethink our own accounts of Greek philosophical history."-- Provided by publisher |
| Contents |
Introduction. What is at stake? -- Part I. Portraits -- Prologue. A portrait of the master as a young woman -- I. Between utopia and history : ten snapshots from a Pythagorean family album -- II. Pictures from an exhibition : the making of a female sage -- Part II. Impersonations -- Introduction to Part II. Women and the living script -- III. Ladies of bygone times : women and the pseudepigraphic time machine -- IV. Ipsa Dixit : letters of Pythagorean Women -- Conclusion -- Epilogue. From Theano to Saint Macrina -- Part III. Texts and translations -- Note on text and translations -- Treatises -- Letters of advice -- Notes from Vaticanus Graecus 578 -- Theophylact Simocatta, Theano to Eurydice. |
| Subject |
Pythagoras and Pythagorean school.
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Women philosophers -- Greece -- History.
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Women -- Greece -- Intellectual life.
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Pythagoras and Pythagorean school. (OCoLC)fst01084727
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Women -- Intellectual life.
(OCoLC)fst01176814
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Women philosophers. (OCoLC)fst01178286
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Greece. (OCoLC)fst01208380
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| Genre/Form |
History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
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| ISBN |
0198859031 (hardcover) |
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9780198859031 (hardcover) |
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