Women and Weasels : Mythologies of Birth in Ancient Greece and Rome - Maurizio Bettini

Women and Weasels

Mythologies of Birth in Ancient Greece and Rome

By: Maurizio Bettini, Emlyn Eisenach (Translator)

Hardcover | 26 August 2013 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover


$171.25

or 4 interest-free payments of $42.81 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 15 to 25 business days

When will this arrive by?
Enter delivery postcode to estimate

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’s 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.
Industry Reviews
"The translation of Maurizio Bettini's Women and Weasels is a major event for classical studies, women's studies, and animal studies. Starting from a rather obscure Greek myth linking childbirth with the weasel, Bettini's remarkable erudition uncovers a lost world of human-animal relations that spans epochs and continents. Its seamless weave of folklore, mythography, anthropology, literary criticism, critical theory, and zoology is both a model of transdisciplinary achievement and an absorbing, brilliantly told tale for the everyday reader." -- "Mark Payne, University of Chicago"
"This is a book of sublime humanism, marrying investigative rigor and conspicuous compassion in a work that traces the persistent expression of an idea from archaic Greece, across classical and medieval Europe, to an early twentieth-century rural American South. That idea persists because it captures a desperation that lies at the very core of the survival-driven human species--the shadowed mystery and potential peril of the conception and bringing forth of one living body from another. Reading Women and Weasels, one is reminded again why Maurizio Bettini is recognized not only as one of Italy's leading public intellectuals but also as a scholar of uncommon sensitivity and perceptivity, supremely in touch with the life of ancient humanity."-- "Roger D. Woodard, University of Buffalo"

More in Classic Fiction

George Orwell's 1984 : The Graphic Novel - George Orwell

RRP $32.99

$30.25

Little Women : Signature Clothbound Editions - Louisa May Alcott
Dracula : Oxford World's Classics - Bram Stoker

RRP $14.95

$11.90

20%
OFF
Demons : Penguin Classics - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

RRP $22.99

$20.50

11%
OFF
The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

$23.50

Animal Farm : Penguin Student Editions - George Orwell

RRP $14.99

$14.75

Iliad and Odyssey : Leather-bound Classics - Homer

RRP $49.99

$43.40

13%
OFF
Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

$16.99

Little Women : Puffin in Bloom - Louisa May Alcott

RRP $27.99

$26.50

Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales : Leather-bound Classics - The Brothers Grimm

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
Frankenstein : Barnes & Noble Flexibound Editions - Mary Shelley
Mrs Dalloway : Penguin Modern Classics - Virginia Woolf
Animal Farm : Clothbound Classics - George Orwell

RRP $32.99

$30.25

Metamorphosis and Other Stories : Clothbound Classics - Franz Kafka
The Lord Of The Rings : Deluxe Illustrated Edition - J. R. R. Tolkien

RRP $275.00

$162.25

41%
OFF
Blood Meridian : Picador Collection - Cormac McCarthy