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No. 2 (3), Readings of the Past No. 1 (2), Anthropology / history of the Contemporary World 2011
No. 1-2 (1), Preliminaries
ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2011, No. 1-2 (1), Preliminaries

Tomasz Mojsik
Muses and Gender of Metapoetics Discourse

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Keywords: gender of Muses, metapoethics, culture and religion in antiquity.

Abstract:
This paper focuses on the question of the place of gender traits in the image of the Muses as protectors of poetry and poets. Pointing out certain peculiar features of the image – the Muses’ virginity, dependence on other deities, especially male gods, relative uniformity, equality and anonymity within the group, present in the early representations, their independence as the mothers of mythical poets from ca. the end of the 6th century BC, and the occurrence of the elements characteristic of the female sex in the poetologische Bildersprache – the author tried to indicate the position of those aspects of the image in the method of conceptualisation of poetry, its influence and the position of a poet in the Greek world. The analyses stemmed from the conviction that in the poetical sphere the role of the Muses was not evident, and that they held an unquestionable advantage in this sphere over Apollo or Dionysus. Thus, the question is: what were the actual gender traits of the Muses that made them associated with the spheres of music and poetry, and thus, which of the traits of the female sex, as a construct functioning in Greek culture, allowed poets to conceptualise – in this very manner – poetry, music and their actions. Why and when their image became dominated by male features – which could be testified by the image of mythical poets as sons of the Muses with no information about their fathers – and whether they belong to their divine traits or to the metapoetic sphere. It seems that certain traits attributed to the female sex in Greek culture – relationship with the knowledge, mimesis, ambiguity and pleasure as results of an action – as well as much more general model of perception of socially marginalised groups could allow us to understand the phenomenon of female protectors of the male sphere of knowledge, memory, word and verbal expression.

About Author:
MOJSIK TOMASZ – historian, classical philologist, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ancient History at the University of Białystok. Contact email: tmojsik[at]uwb.edu.pl

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