This book proposes to rethink kinship in early Greek epic poetry, and argues that the depiction of parenthood as a poetic practice in epic poetry is socially motivated. Thus, the discursive form and the narrative function of genealogical relations are studied within the poetic context that encompasses them and according to the criterion of gender in order to interpret the references to the female and/or masculine ancestors in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Theogony, the Catalogue of Women and the Homeric Hymns.
Furthermore, this book makes an important step towards a female-centered catalogic poetics. Through the study of the analytic female-centered catalogues attested in archaic Greek epic poetry, this book highlights the hypothesis of the existence of a female-centered poetic tradition that sang the klea gynaikôn in terms of kinship and procreation.
Within a reception perspective that expands beyond classical disciplines, the study of the function of kinship in early Greek epic poetry touches on anthropological, literary and historical subjects that fall within several disciplinary fields such as ancient history, anthropology of kinship, women's history and gender studies.
