Daughters of Hecate Women and Magic in the Ancient World [Paperback]

Daughters of Hecateunites for the first time research on the problem of gender and magic in three ancient Mediterranean societies: early Judaism, Christianity, and Graeco-Roman culture. The book illuminates the gendering of ancient magic by approaching the topic from three distinct disciplinary perspectives: literary stereotyping, the social application of magic discourse, and material culture.

The authors probe the foundations of, processes, and motivations behind gendered stereotypes, beginning with Western culture's earliest associations of women and magic in the Bible and Homer's Odyssey.Daughters of Hecateprovides a nuanced exploration of the topic while avoiding reductive approaches. In fact, the essays in this volume uncover complexities and counter-discourses that challenge, rather than reaffirm, many gendered stereotypes taken for granted and reified by most modern scholarship.

By combining critical theoretical methods with research into literary and material evidence,Daughters of Hecateinterrogates a false association that has persisted from antiquity, to early modern witch hunts, to the present day.

Preface

1. Interrogating the Magic-Gender Connection -Kimberly B. Stratton

Part I. Fiction and Fantasy: Gendering Magic in Literature

2. From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and the Roman Witch in Classical Literature -Barbette Stanley Spaeth
3. The Most Worthy of Women is a Mistress of Magic : Women as Witches and Ritual Practitioners in 1 Enoch and Rabbinic Sources -Rebecca Lesses
4. Gendering Heavenly Secrets? Women, Angels, and the Problem of Misogyny and Magic -Annette Yoshiko Reed
5. Magic, Abjection, and Gender in Roman Literature -Kimberly B. Stratton

Part II. Gender and Magic Discourse in Practice

6. Magic Accusations Against Women in Tacitus's Annals -Elizabeth Ann Pollard