Patriarchal Moments - (Textual Moments in the History of Political Thought) by Cesare Cuttica & Gaby Mahlberg (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Patriarchalism is omnipresent in Western culture and it pervades the texts that have shaped this culture. From the creation story in the Bible to the ancient authors, from the Church fathers to the treatises of Enlightenment philosophers, right up to modern fiction, male authority over women, children and other dependents has shaped the nature of human relationships and the discourses about these relationships.

This collection of short essays offers fresh and novel readings of key texts in the history of patriarchalism as a concept of power. The texts selected are from political, religious and literary works and together the readings add new insights to a tradition that has never gone uncontested, yet is unlikely to disappear soon.

Review Quotes

[This] volume should prove to be a useful and well-priced addition to any undergraduate course dealing with the contours of patriarchal power in the western world. The passages chosen are all relevant and interesting, and student readers will find the short essays lively and easily digestible.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review

The sharp, nuanced and often witty essays in this volume cast a fresh light on the patriarchalist tradition, showing it to be nimble and plastic, far more complex and contradictory than we have imagined. With its chronological breadth and interdisciplinary perspective, Patriarchal Moments will be welcomed by students, by teachers, and by any reader wondering why the notion that men should rule women, wives and children has persisted in so forms over so many centuries.
Rachel Weil, Cornell University, USA

This excellent, wide-ranging collection of essays by leading experts is a key starting point (and a mine of information) for anyone with an interest in ideas about the links between families and states, and between patriarchal and political authority. It discusses patriarchal power in the political thought of the ancient and modern worlds - beginning with the bible, the Talmud, and the Qur'an, and ending with Angela Carter. There is especially detailed discussion of European ideas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is a lucidly expressed, entertaining and instructive collection, based on the latest scholarship in a number of disciplines.
Johann Sommerville, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

About the Author

Cesare Cuttica is Lecturer in British History at the University of Paris 8-Vincennes, France.

Gaby Mahlberg is an independent scholar based in Berlin, Germany.