"The Female Homer: An Exploration of Women's Epic Poetry opens with simple questions: Are there any women's epic poems? If so, what are the central characteristics of these epics, and how do they relate to the traditional vision of epic poetry as male-authored and masculinist, as powerful and patriarchal? Starting from these questions, Jeremy M. Downes explores relations among women's epic poems over a great span of time and technology from the ancient Sumerian Descent of Inanna to Rita Dove, from the oral epics of the Russian bylinists to contemporary "language" poets. Through brief, accessible chapters, Downes opens up the mythic structures of women's epic, developing its relations with feminism and patriarchy, with religion and democracy, with the personal and the political, with its literary grandmothers and grandfathers. The Female Homer, though aware of the divergences, focuses on bringing together the strong affinities between these diverse epic voices.^
In doing so, it charts - for the first time - the otherwise invisible tradition of women's epic." "The Female Homer provides a powerful research tool through its checklist of women's epic poems, and a vital starting point for investigations and new conversations in the field. For scholars in Comparative Literature and English Studies who are already at work on questions of women's epic, the recovery of women's texts, and the place of women's writings within traditionally masculine canons of literature, The Female Homer sketches and consolidates the field. Beyond these specialists, scholars in all fields of literary study, once they clear their initial shock at the existence of women's epic, will be engaged by the kinds of texts these women poets have produced. Beyond an academic audience, the wider reading public will find in this accessibly written volume a welcome introduction to an unknown range of texts and authors.^
This approach also makes it a suitable textbook for courses in epic, in narrative theory, and in women's studies. A special audience for The Female Homer, of course, is found in women poets themselves, who still, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, seek out their literary grandmothers and great-grandmothers." "Whether dealing with ancient narratives or anonymous epic, with modernist fragmentation or highly personal poetry, with materialism or with matriarchy, The Female Homer maintains key theoretical distinctions and rigorous standards of evidence, and seeks to open up questions rather than provide final answers. But at the same time, reaching for the broader audience to whom these poems might make a substantial difference - emotional, political, and intellectual - it aims at an openness of style, sharing its enjoyment of the brilliant diversity of these neglected works."--Jacket.
