Anthropologists John Scheid and Jesper Svendro have studied the subjects of politics, of sexual union and of language through the myth of fabric and its weaving. Reading their essay « Zeus’s Loom. The Myth of Weaving and of Fabric in the Greco-Roman world » motivated me to continue my research on the subject. Ionna Papadopoulou-Belmehdi is a researcher of Ancient Greece anthropology. In, « Penelope’s Song: the poetry of women weaving in the Odyssey » (Belin publishers, 1994), she uses different versions of the text of the Odyssey, to underline the inwardness of Penelope as a « thinker character ». This book is part of a thesis: « Pandora’s Art: The Mythology of Weaving in Ancient Greece », that Ionna Papadopoulou-Belmehdi supported in June 1992 at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. I read that thesis during March 2006.

Time period

13th October 2005 → March 2006