Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being

By Page duBois

Book Overview

In Centaurs and Amazons, Page duBois offers a prehistory of hierarchy. Using structural anthropology, symbolic analysis, and recent literary theory, she demonstrates a shift in Greek thought from the fifth to the fourth century B.C. that had a profound influence upon subsequent Western culture and politics. Through an analysis of mythology, drama, sculpture, architecture, and Greek vase painting, duBois documents the transition from a system of thought that organized the experience of difference in terms of polarity and analogy to one based upon a relatively rigid hierarchical scheme. This was the beginning of "the great chain of being," the philosophical construct that all life was organized in minute gradations of superiority and inferiority. This scheme, in various guises, has continued to influence philosophical and political thought. The author's intelligent and discriminating use of scholarship from various fields makes Centaurs and Amazons an impressive interdisciplinary study of interest to classicists, feminist scholars, historians, art historians, anthropologists, and political scientists.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472081535
• ISBN13: 9780472081530
• Release Date: July 1991
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

This Book Rocks!!!!

The woman's position in history is, yet again, reaffirmed by this excelent author! The mythological connections to literary tradition are provoking:)~ The style is readable, the research fascinating, and the entire work is well worth purchasing!