Gendered discourses: The early history of mythos and logos

History of Religions

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 1-12

  Lincoln, Bruce ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449162463     PISSN: 00182710     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/463440     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Wilhelm Nestle, Vom Mythos zu Logos: die Selbstentfahung des griechischen Denkens von Homer bis auf die Sophistik und Sokrates (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1940; 2d ed., 1942; reprint, Darmstadt: Scientia, 1966)
2. See, e.g., F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy (New York: Longmans Green, 1912)
3. Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (London: Blackwell, 1953)
4. W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, I: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 1-3, 140-42
5. G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1983), pp. 72-74
6. and Peter Schmitter, "Vom 'Mythos' zum 'Logos': Erkenntniskritik und Sprachreilexion bei den Vorsokratikern," in Geschichte der Sprachtheorie (Tübingen: Narr, 1991), 2:57-86
7. Eric Havelock has added an important dimension to this discussion by stressing how important a role was played by the introduction of writing, but in many other ways the story he tells remains similar to that of his predecessors. See, e.g., his essay "Preliteracy and the Presocratics," in The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 220-60
8. and "The Linguistic Task of the Presocratics," in Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy, ed. Kevin Robb (La Salle, 111.: Monist Library of Philosophy, 1983), pp. 7-81
9. Richard P. Martin, The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989)
10. In his brief career as professor of classical philology, Nietzsche twice taught seminars on the Works and Days (1870 and 1878). He paraphrased the fable of hawk and nightingale in The Genealogy of Morals, first essay, sec. 13, eliminating all traces of sympathy for prey and critique of predation: "That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: 'these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather is opposite, a Iamb would he not be good?' there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: 'we don't dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.' To demand of strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength" (trans. Walter Kaufmann). On the Hesiodic passage, see Annie Bonnafé, "Le rossignol et la justice en pleurs," Bulletin de Γassociation Georges Budé (1983): 260-64
11. Jens Uwe Schmidt, "Hesiods Ainos von Habicht und Nachtigall," Wort und Diensl 17 (1983): 55-76
12. Steven Lonsdale, "Hesiod's Hawk and Nightingale (Op. 202-12), Fable or Omen?" Hermes 117 (1989): 403-12
13. and Marie-Christine Leclerc, "Le rossignol et Γépervier d'Hésiode: Une fable a double sens," Revue des etudes grecques 105 (1992): 37-44
14. Works and Days 202-11
15. Within the Homeric Hymn, Hermes is referred to by a host of terms that play on the vocabulary of mêtis (cunning), haimulos (seduction), and dolos (snare, guile) haimulomêtis (line 13), poikilomêtis (155, 514), dolophrades (282), polymêlis (318), dolomêtis (405)and his use of doloi is also mentioned at lines 66, 76, and 86. Regarding Hermes and the character he assumes in this hymn, the discussion of Norman O. Brown, Hermes the Thief (New York: Vintage, 1969 [originally published 1947]), retains its value
16. See also Giancarlo Croci, "Mito e poetica nell inno a Ermes," Bolietino dell' Istituto dì Filologia greca, Università di Padova 4 (1977/78): 175-84
17. Laurence Kahn, Hermes passe, ou ïés ambiguïtés de la communication (Paris: Maspero, 1978)
18. and H. Herter, "LΊnno a Hermes alia luce della poesia orale," in / poemi epici rapsodici non omerici e la tradizione orale, ed. C. Brillante et al. (Padua, 1981), pp. 183-201
19. Homeric Hymn to Hermes 317-18
20. On the earliest uses of logos, the most thorough discussion to date is Herbert Boeder ("Der frühgriechische Wortgebrauch von Logos und Alêtheia," Archiv für Begriffsgeschichle 4 [1959]: 82-112), who begins with this observation: "Im Epos ist dieses Wort [logos] noch wenig gebräuchlich. Die spärlichen Belege nennen es nur im Zusammenhang von Bezauberung, Ablenkung und Irreführung" (p. 82)
21. Also of interest are Henri Fournier, Les verbes "dire" en grec ancien (Paris: Klinckseick, 1946)
22. and Claude Calame, " 'Mythe' et 'rite' en Grèce: des categories indigenes?" Kernos 4 (1991): 179-204
23. Regarding the attitudes of Hesiod and his contemporaries toward women, see G. Arrighetti, "II misoginismo di Esiodo," in Misoginia e maschìlismo in Grecia e in Roma (Genoa: Istituto di filologia classica e medievale, Università di Genova, 1981), pp. 27-48
24. Patricia A. Marquardt, "Hesiod's Ambiguous View of Women," Classical Philology 77 (1982): 283-91
25. Marilyn Arthur, "The Dream of a World without Women: Poetics and the Circles of Order in the Theogony Proemium," Arethusa 16 (1983): 63-82
26. and Jean Rudhardt, "Pandora, Hésiode et les femmes," Museum Helveticum 43 (1986): 231-46
27. Note also the broader discussion of Ann Bergren, "Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought," Arethusa 16 (1983): 69-95
28. Charles H. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 102
29. The best treatment remains Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1963)
30. For different approaches, see Stanley Rosen, The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry (New York: Routledge, 1988)
31. Thomas Gould, The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990)
32. and Bruce Lincoln, "Socrates' Prosecutors, Philosophy's Rivals, and the Politics of Discursive Forms," Arethusa 26 (1993): 233-46. Also relevant and important are the discussions of Marcel Detienne (The Creation of Mythology [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986]), Paul Veyne (Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths? [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988]), and Luc Brisson (Platon, les mots et les mythes [Paris: Maspero, 1982])