Book contents
- Ancient Greek Lists
- Ancient Greek Lists
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Tally of Text
- 1 A Number of Things
- 2 “Or Such a Woman as…”
- 3 Displaying the Past
- 4 Stone Treasuries
- 5 Citizens Who Count
- 6 Unified Infinities, Catalogic Chronotopes
- 7 Conclusion and Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
2 - “Or Such a Woman as…”
Exchange Value in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2021
- Ancient Greek Lists
- Ancient Greek Lists
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Tally of Text
- 1 A Number of Things
- 2 “Or Such a Woman as…”
- 3 Displaying the Past
- 4 Stone Treasuries
- 5 Citizens Who Count
- 6 Unified Infinities, Catalogic Chronotopes
- 7 Conclusion and Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Summary
Chapter 2 explores the poetics of epic catalogue in the best evidence we have for the archaic catalogue poem, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. While Greek lists in some instances impart official value to a collection of objects, this chapter explores the idea of the catalogue as a mode of gendered control and a marker of loss. Alongside the Odyssean catalogue of women in the Nekuia and Semonides catalogue of women, we can read the genre of woman-catalogue more generally as an attempt to typologize and collapse the individuality of women, all the while treating them as objects similar to any saleable prestige item.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ancient Greek ListsCatalogue and Inventory Across Genres, pp. 48 - 77Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021