In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Pandora is at the center of an otherness that is omnipresent in the literary text.1 In Hesiod’s Works and Days her otherness is, first and foremost, a sign of a poetics tha t recognizes its finitude and embraces its h uman origins. Pandora marks th e unbridgeable distance that separates the human language from a pure language of sameness, the language of the gods. At the same time, the image of the first woman has another, somewhat opposed, meaning in th e Hesiodic text. Pandora not only thr eatens the cohesiveness of poetic language; she a lso represents the need to domesticate, to cultivate, a dimension of otherness that will support the very possibility of textuality. A text’s meaning is made possible by the existence of a tension between two opposing mo vements. On th e on e han d, the text must c ontain a dimension of otherness and difference that opens up its language t o new meanings. Without such difference a text remains tautological and trivial, unable to carve a uniq ue identity in th e space of language. On the other hand, otherness cann ot c onstitute th e g rounds for c onveying meaning . Rather, the communicability of a text—its legibility—depends on a r egulative pr inciple of sameness. A text i s a text only if it functions w ithin shared horizons of language and meaning. This makes the text both singular and, at the same time, always part of a common field of textuality, always belonging to a f amily of texts. In Hesiod’s Works and Days these two opposing orientations are joined in the person of the first woman. The image of femininity thus assumes a dua l appear ance in th e dida ctic epic, being a sig n of both di fference and the overcoming of difference. The feminine, in other words, serves as a metaphor for two textual layers that are often at odds with one another  c h a p t e r  The Socratic Pandora but which gen erate a tension tha t i s ess ential t o th e forma tion of the didactic epic. These two aspects of the feminine find expression in two traits assigned to th e figure of Pandora: the dec eptive s educer an d th e v irginal br ide. While the image of woman as femme fatale inspires the didactic project, its mirror image i s critical for r ealizing the ethical impulse proposed by the epic. Whereas Pandora’s seductive force reflects men’s separation from the Golden Age and their banishment to an alien world, the figure of the obedient bride points to the possibility of resolution and a symbolic homecoming . Hence, as Hesiod promotes the image of the silent and innocent maiden as a suit able candidate for marriage, an alternative conception of the feminine emerges. As I sha ll sh ow, Works and Da ys issues fr om a tension betw een tw o poetic forms tha t I descr ibe as a “poetics of marriage” and a “poetics of eros.”2 These two poetic modes ar e the prototypes of two distinct generic discourses: the didactic and the philosophical. Described in a mor e schematic f ashion: the didactic text oper ates under the sign of the obedient married woman; it presupposes a form of readership that fully c onsents to the text’s authority. The philosophical text, on the other hand, can never fully reveal the source of its authority. Nevertheless, it tempts th e reader to pursue an unknown path that holds out a pr omise. In thi s chapter , the opposition betw een th e dida ctic an d th e philosophical text i s examined through the opposition betw een the poetics of marriage appear ing in X enophon’s Oeconomicus and the poetics of eros appearing in Pla to’s Symposium. Against the background of the didactic text, the chapter explores the unique ties between the poetics of the philosophical text and the feminine. My aim is to show that the heritage of the Hesiodic Pandora is intrinsic to the formation of the philosophical poetics of eros, and in par ticular to the Platonic figure of Socrates. W I  I L Preoccupied with the fundamental experience of difference that plagues the relationship between men and women, Hesiod inquires into the traits of an ideal wife. According to...

Share