From Motherright to Gylany: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-2000

FAIN: FB-50620-04

Cynthia L. Eller
Montclair State University (Montclair, NJ 07043-1600)

I'm requesting funding to complete the manuscript of a book tentatively entitled From Motherright to Gylany: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-2000. It will consist of an intellectual history of ideas of prehistoric matriarchy and goddess worship in Europe and America, focusing especially on how the myth of matriarchal prehistory developed, what interests it served, how it changed over time, and what notions of gender have remained stable across the 140 years of its existence. The book begins with the pioneering work of J. J. Bachofen, Motherright, and continues to the synthesis of matriarchal myth recently put forward by Riane Eisler (in The Chalice and the Blade), in which she refers to matriarchy as "gylany."

Media Coverage

Unearthing Matriarchy (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Peter Wood
Publication: Chronicle of Higher Education
Date: 4/14/2011
URL: http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/unearthing-matriarchy/29233

(Review)
Author(s): Linda-Anne Rebhun
Publication: Ms.
Date: 3/31/2011
URL: http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2011/index.asp

Associated Products

Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900 (Book)
Title: Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900
Author: Cynthia Eller
Abstract: Gentlemen and Amazons traces the nineteenth-century genesis and development of an important contemporary myth about human origins: that of an original prehistoric matriarchy. Cynthia Eller explores the intellectual history of the myth, which arose from male scholars who mostly wanted to vindicate the patriarchal family model as a higher stage of human development. Eller tells the stories these men told, analyzes the gendered assumptions they made, and provides the necessary context for understanding how feminists of the 1970s and 1980s embraced as historical "fact" a discredited nineteenth-century idea.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520266766
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0520266766

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