Time exploitation in Brutal Myths' Introductions

The introduction to Brutal Myths is actually a compiling of the facts (or texts) that led to the development of this hypertext. After the question to which Brutal Myths is an answer ("Are women the guilty daughters of Eve?"), the authors present some verses from the Bible, having all to do with the fatidic relationship between men and plants ("She took the fruit thereof and did eat and she gave also unto her husband"). And then we have the explanation of the starting point of Brutal Myths. It's just a tiny point of the History, but for the authors, this is were most of women's current misfortunes. During the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834), every means were good enough to justify witch-hunting and other heretic exterminations. In 1487, Innocent VII approved the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum : The Hammer of Witches, a witch-hunting manual, that claimed, among other facts, that witches were more often women than men, and that they planted Bitter Herbs in the field in order to destroy men. The plants were of course characterized by particular properties. Unfortunately, as almost every discriminatory rumor, these beliefs made their way in men's minds and got transformed to become demeaning myths about women.

After having "supported" and shown the facts that led to believe that women could be the evil daughters of Eve, Rapoport and Sat start their introduction by answering that question ("Women are NOT the guilty daughters of Eve"). They use only quotes from Christian texts : "Let each one of us dig down after the root of evil which is within one, and let one pluck it out of one's heart from the root" (Gospel of Philip).
Having shown that Christian beliefs led to the worst practices of misogyny, I think that the authors want to use Christianity in order to show that there are two different ways of reading the Bible. If one is right (Women are the guilty daughters of Eve) being based on the Bible, therefore the other is also right (Women are not the guilty daughters of Eve). Though, the first one has been believed as the unique truth.

The common point between the introduction to Brutal Myths and the introduction to Destroying Myths is the utilization of the Bible as an argument.

So we can see that the aspect of Time is really present in the first introduction,while it is just suggested to the reader in the introduction to Destroying Myths. Beside, the authors only use examples of time that are not quite defined ; except for Innocent VII, we don't really now when the rest of the events take place (no one knows when the Bible was written).



Introduction
Time exploitation in Brutal Myths' first part (1)
Time exploitation in Brutal Myths' first part (2)
Time exploitation in Destroying Myths
Conclusion

Return to Second Paper : Second Paper

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Charlotte Fernandez
charfer@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia Press