The present book is an attempt to delineate 'The Status of Women in the Epics'. Many scholars have thrown light on the position of women in the Vedic, Buddhist and later periods of ancient Indian history and have also made a study of their status in the legal literature of the times. Only few attempt mainly deals with sexual life in Epics. In this book the original sources drawn upon are the two great Epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The secondary sources are commentaries, translations and dissertations written on these works. In tracing the status of women in the Epics, the author has strictly endeavored to draw conclusions from the evidences gathered from these two great Epics. The very nature of Epic literature is dealt with in detail in the introduction, pre-Vedic and Vedic traditions provide the social background of the Epic Society. The characters of the Epics, particularly those of the Mahabharata belong to the Brahmanas and Upanisads period. The customs traced in the narrative parts of the Epics are those found in Sutras. The author has attempted to collect, collate and scrutinize parallel evidences of customs and conditions from the above mentioned literature on the one hand and the Epics on the other.

Women in Greek epic are treated as objects, as commodities to be exchanged in marriage or as the spoils of warfare. However, women in Homeric epic also use objects to negotiate their own agency, subverting the male viewpoint by utilizing on their own terms the very form they themselves are thought by men to embody. Such female objects can transcend their physical limitations and be both symbolically significant and powerfully characterizing. They can be tools of recognition and identification. They can pause narrative and be used agonistically. They can send messages and be vessels for memory. Women of Substance in Homeric Epic offers a new and insightful approach to the Iliad and Odyssey, bringing together Gender Theory and the burgeoning field of New Materialisms, new to classical studies, and thereby combining an approach predicated on the idea of the woman as object with one which questions the very distinction between subject and object. This productive tension leads us to decentre the male subject and to put centre stage not only the woman as object but also the agency of women and objects. The volume comes at a turning point in the gendering of Homeric studies, with the publication of the first English translations by women of the Iliad in 2015 and the Odyssey in 2017, by Caroline Alexander and Emily Wilson respectively. It makes a significant contribution to scholarship by demonstrating that women in Homeric epic are not only objectified, but are also well-versed users of objects; this is something that Homer portrays clearly, that Odysseus understands, but that has often escaped many other men, from Odysseus' alter ego Aethon in Odyssey 19 to modern experts on Homeric epic.

This study by Hélène Monsacré shows how Western ideals of inexpressive manhood run contrary to the poetic vision of Achilles and his warrior companions presented in the Homeric epics. Pursuing the paradox of the tearful fighter, Monsacré examines the interactions between men and women in the Homeric poems.

These essays explore the place, function and meaning of women as characters, authors, constructs and symbols in Medieval epics from Persia, Spain, France, England, Germany and Scandinavia. Usually believed to narrate the deeds of men at war, this book looks at the key roles often played by women and the impact of this on the history of gender.

In the first edition of Women in Greek Myth, Mary R. Lefkowitz convincingly challenged narrow, ideological interpretations of the roles of female characters in Greek mythology. Where some scholars saw the Amazons as the last remnant of a forgotten matriarchy, Clytemnestra as a frustrated individualist, and Antigone as an oppressed revolutionary, Lefkowitz argued that such views were justified neither by the myths themselves nor by the relevant documentary evidence. Concentrating on those aspects of women’s experience most often misunderstood—life apart from men, marriage, influence in politics, self-sacrifice and martyrdom, and misogyny—she presented a far less negative account of the role of Greek women, both ordinary and extraordinary, as manifested in the central works of Greek literature. This updated and expanded edition includes six new chapters on such topics as heroic women in Greek epic, seduction and rape in Greek myth, and the parts played by women in ancient rites and festivals. Revisiting the original chapters as well to incorporate two decades of more recent scholarship, Lefkowitz again shows that what Greek men both feared and valued in women was not their sexuality but their intelligence.