Jane McIntosh Snyder - The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome

 Jane McIntosh Snyder. The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. (USA: Southern Illinois University, 1989). T

his is a study of women and their role in the development of ancient Greek poetry, as well as translations of the ancient works. This book examines the ways women expressed themselves and their experiences, and the impact of this on the development of Greek poetry and literary form. 

In the Introduction, Sandra M. Gilbert uses the term ad feminam explaining that feminist criticism asks a series of questions to the woman both as the writer and reader of texts. Snappily, she asks: ‘What is the relationship between gender and genre, between sexuality and textuality?’ (p. ix). Snyder, in the Preface, hopes readers can ‘hear at last the echoes of women’s voices speaking to us through the silence of two millennia’ (p. xii). Both acknowledge the patriarchal construction of the canon and that women’s writing has been judged by men according to socially imposed standards of propriety rather than the texts themselves. Snyder translates, provides context, and notates the poems by author.

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