"What if truth were a woman?" asked Nietzsche. In ancient Greek thought, truth in language has a special relation to the female by virtue of her pre-eminent art-form—the one Freud believed was even invented by women—weaving. The essays in this book explore the implications of this nexus: language, the female, weaving, and the construction of truth.

The Homeric bard—male, to be sure—inherits from Indo-European culture the designation of his poetry as a weaving, the female's art. Like her tapestries, his "texts" can suspend, reverse, and re-order time. He can weave the content from one world into the interstices of another.

The male poet shares the ambiguous power of the female Muses whose speech he channels. "We can say false things like to real things, and whenever we wish, we can utter the truth."

Introduction
Chapter 1: Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought
Chapter 2: Helen's Web: Time and Tableau in the Iliad
Chapter 3: Similes and Symbolization in Odyssey v
Chapter 4: Odyssean Temporality: Many (Re)Turns 
Chapter 5: Helen's "Good Drug"
Chapter 6: Sacred Apostrophe: Re-Presentation and Imitation in 
Chapter 7: Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Tradition and Rhetoric, Praise and Blame
Chapter 8: The (Re)Marriage of Penelope and Odysseus
Chapter 9: Architecture Gender Philosophy
Chapter 10: Female Fetish Urban Form