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The Pregnant Male as Myth and Metaphor in Classical Greek Literature. By D avid D. Leitao . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 320. $99.00 (cloth).
David Leitao's new book explores the rhetorical use of this image of paternity as it appears in ancient Greek philosophy with its precedent in myth. The work was inspired, as Leitao reveals in his introduction, by Plato's description of thought as "giving birth" in the Symposium. The project of this book is to trace the prehistory of this idea in earlier philosophical and literary works; the author demonstrates that this idea was not original to Plato but part of a minor discourse that preceded him. The text is meticulously researched, and it thoroughly contextualizes the metaphor of the pregnant male as it appears in myth, tragedy, and philosophy. Leitao engages with a variety of discourses, making this work useful to scholars working in classics, the history of philosophy, political theory, comparative literature, and gender studies.
Leitao approaches the metaphor of male pregnancy from a new angle; he argues, in the case of Dionysus's thigh birth and elsewhere, that it has "little to do with debates about the proper role of men and women in reproduction or in society more generally" (58). Instead, he suggests that this image is deployed in response to questions of kinship, paternity, and civic status and was formulated as a solution to metaphysical, theological, and scientific debates of the time. Rather than examine the intent of the authors in using the metaphor or the psychoanalytic interpretation of the...