A01=Maurizio Bettini
alcmene
ancient world
animals
archetype
Author_Maurizio Bettini
birth
bride
Category=JBSF1
Category=QRS
classics
domesticity
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
feminism
folklore
forest
gender
godmother
greece
hera
heracles
hero
heroine
heroism
literary theory
literature
maternity
medicine
midwife
mother in law
mythology
nonfiction
patriarchy
pets
pliny
pregnancy
prostitutes
religion
rescuer
rome
sexuality
shero
sisters
status
weasels
western culture
witchcraft
women
Product details
- ISBN 9780226044743
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 26 Aug 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles' birth - and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments that highlight the weasel's many attributes. We learn of its legendary sexual and childbearing habits and symbolic association with witchcraft and midwifery, its role as a domestic pet favored by women, and its ability to slip in and out of tight spaces. The weasel, Bettini reveals, is present at many unexpected moments in human history, assisting women in labor and thwarting enemies who might plot their ruin.
With a parade of symbolic associations between weasels and women-witches, prostitutes, midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers, and heroes - Bettini brings to life one of the most venerable and enduring myths of Western culture.
Maurizio Bettini is professor of classical philology at the Universita degli Studi di Siena, Italy, and a regular visiting professor in the Department of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. Emlyn Eisenach is an independent scholar and translator and the author of Husbands, Wives, and Concubines: Marriage, Family, and Social Order in Sixteenth-Century Verona.
