At the same time, the book also suggests how the Hymn implicitly locates this experience within the broader context of Greek culture and belief. Although the Hymn and its myth have attracted the attention of feminist writers both within and outside of Classics, this book now makes it possible for a wide audience to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by this text to gain some understanding of Greek social and religious practices and the subjective experience of them on the part of a group heavily disadvantaged by the structure of society, and thereby to gain some perspective on our own culture as well. In this way, the Hymn can supplement for us the fragments of Sappho and other women poets.
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, as Helene Foley emphasizes throughout this book, is unique among early Greek narrative poetry in concentrating on female experience in ancient Greek society and the ways in which that experience was symbolically expressed, and mitigated, in cult and ritual.
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