The female Homer

by Jeremy M. Downes

"The Female Homer: An Exploration of Women's Epic Poetry opens with simple questions: Are there any women's epic poems? If so, what are the central characteristics of these epics, and how do they relate to the traditional vision of epic poetry as male-authored and masculinist, as powerful and patriarchal? Starting from these questions, Jeremy M. Downes explores relations among women's epic poems over a great span of time and technology from the ancient Sumerian Descent of Inanna to Rita Dove, from the oral epics of the Russian bylinists to contemporary "language" poets. Through brief, accessible chapters, Downes opens up the mythic structures of women's epic, developing its relations with feminism and patriarchy, with religion and democracy, with the personal and the political, with its literary grandmothers and grandfathers. The Female Homer, though aware of the divergences, focuses on bringing together the strong affinities between these diverse epic voices.^ In doing so, it charts -