Download or read book Myth and Society in Ancient Greece written by Jean-Pierre Vernant and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking study, Jean Pierre-Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece takes us far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon to reveal a fundamentally other culture: one of slavery, of masks and death, of scapegoats, of ritual hunting and ecstasies.Vernant's provocative discussion of various institutions and practices including war, marriage, and sacrifice details the complex intersection of the religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. The book concludes with Vernant's authoritative genealogy of the study of myth from antiquity to structuralism and beyond.
Download or read book Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece written by Jean-Pierre Vernant and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Myth and Thought Among the Greeks written by Jean-Pierre Vernant and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jean-Pierre Vernant first published Myth and Thought among the Greeks in 1965,it transformed the field of ancient Greek scholarship, calling forth a new way to think about Greekmyth and thought. In eighteen essays--three of which, along with a new preface, are translated intoEnglish for the first time--Vernant freed the subject of ancient Greece from its philological chainsand reread the questions of "muthos" and "logos" within multifaced and transdisciplinarycontexts--of religion, ritual, and art, philosophy, science, social and economic institutions, andhistorical psychology. A major contribution to both the humanities and the social sciences, Myth andThought among the Greeks aims to come to terms with a single, essential question: How wereindividual persons in ancient Greece inseparable from a social and cultural environment of whichthey were simultaneously the creators and products? Seven themes organize this stellar work--from"Myth Structures" and "Mythic Aspects of Memory and Time" to "The Organization of Space," "Work andTechnological Thought," and "Personal Identity and Religion." A master storyteller, an innovative,precise, and original thinker, Vernant continues to change the narratives we tell about thehistories of civilizations and the histories of human beings in their individual and collectiveidentities.
Download or read book Myth and History in Ancient Greece written by Claude Calame and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-22 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their "mythology." Here, Claude Calame mounts a powerful critique of modern-day misconceptions on this front and the lax methodology that has allowed them to prevail. He argues that the Greeks viewed their abundance of narratives not as a single mythology but as an "archaeology." They speculated symbolically on key historical events so that a community of believing citizens could access them efficiently, through ritual means. Central to the book is Calame's rigorous and fruitful analysis of various accounts of the foundation of that most "mythical" of the Greek colonies--Cyrene, in eastern Libya. Calame opens with a magisterial historical survey demonstrating today's misapplication of the terms "myth" and "mythology." Next, he examines the Greeks' symbolic discourse to show that these modern concepts arose much later than commonly believed. Having established this interpretive framework, Calame undertakes a comparative analysis of six accounts of Cyrene's foundation: three by Pindar and one each by Herodotus (in two different versions), Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. We see how the underlying narrative was shaped in each into a poetically sophisticated, distinctive form by the respective medium, a particular poetical genre, and the specific socio-historical circumstances. Calame concludes by arguing in favor of the Greeks' symbolic approach to the past and by examining the relation of mythos to poetry and music.
Download or read book Eros written by Bruce S Thornton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-12 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality is a controversial book that lays bare the meanings Greeks gave to sex. Contrary to the romantic idealization of sex dominating our culture, the Greeks saw eros as a powerful force of nature, potentially dangerous and in need of control by society: Eros the Destroyer, not Cupid the Insipid, is what fired the Greek imagination. The destructiveness of eros can be seen in Greek imagery and metaphor, and in their attitudes toward women and homosexuals. Images of love as fire, disease, storms, insanity, and violence—top 40 song clichés for us—locate eros among the unpredictable and deadly forces of nature. The beautiful Aphrodite embodies the alluring danger of sex, and femmes fatales like Pandora and Helen represent the risky charms of female sexuality. And homosexuality typifies for the Greeks the frightening power of an indiscriminate appetite that threatens the stability of culture itself. In Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Seualily, Bruce Thornton offers a uniquely sweeping and comprehensive account of ancient sexuality free of currently fashionable theoretical jargon and pretensions. In its conclusions the book challenges the distortions of much recent scholarship on Greek sexuality. And throughout it links the wary attitudes of the Greeks to our present-day concerns about love, sex, and family. What we see, finally, are the origins of some of our own views as well as a vision of sexuality that is perhaps more honest and mature than our own dangerous illusions.
Download or read book Greek Myths written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautifully-illustrated book filled with over 30 Ancient Greek Myths for children aged 7-9. Journey into a world of gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, extraordinary creatures and fantastic monsters with this beautifully illustrated introduction to Ancient Greek mythology. Perfect for children aged 7 to 9, this collection contains more than 30 enthralling new retellings of favourite Greek myths as well as some you might not have heard before. Including ‘Theseus and the Minotaur’, ‘The 12 Labours of Herakles’, and the escapades of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’, each myth is told in engaging modern language, which is easy for children to understand yet still retains the humour and intrigue of the original tales. Encourage your children to explore: - Over 30 fascinating Greek myths, covering famous classics and lesser known stories - Striking illustrations by multi-award winning artist Katie Ponder - Stunning gold foil on the cover - A handy pronunciation guide listing all difficult-to-pronounce names for the reader’s convenience - Key reference spreads combining the appeal of a story collection with key reference information A must-have volume for children aged 7-9 with an interest in Greek mythology and history, the additional feature pages delve deeper into the mythical world, providing profiles of the gods and a map detailing Odysseus’ long voyage home from the Trojan War. The reference section provides key background information, such as Ancient Greek storytelling and the incredible beasts of the myths, and a handy pronunciation guide. Greek Myths is the perfect gift, featuring stunning gold foil on the cover and beautiful illustrations throughout. Quench your child’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge, as they explore the enthralling tales, whether by themselves or to equally be enjoyed as bedtime stories alongside parents.
Download or read book Enraged written by Emily Katz Anhalt and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Anhalt’s contribution is building an overarching narrative of how the Greeks engaged problems of anger—problems that continue to provoke.”—Choice Millennia ago, Greek myths exposed the dangers of violent rage and the need for empathy and self-restraint. Homer’s Iliad, Euripides’ Hecuba, and Sophocles’ Ajax show that anger and vengeance destroy perpetrators and victims alike. Composed before and during the ancient Greeks’ groundbreaking movement away from autocracy toward more inclusive political participation, these stories offer guidelines for modern efforts to create and maintain civil societies. Emily Katz Anhalt reveals how these three masterworks of classical Greek literature can teach us, as they taught the ancient Greeks, to recognize violent revenge as a marker of illogical thinking and poor leadership. These time-honored texts emphasize the costs of our dangerous penchant for glorifying violent rage and those who would indulge in it. By promoting compassion, rational thought, and debate, Greek myths help to arm us against the tyrants we might serve and the tyrants we might become. “An engaging and sometimes inspiring guide to the rich complexities of the Iliad . . . Her underlying point is that, from its earliest origins, Western literature questioned the values of the society that produced it.”—The New York Times Book Review “Anhalt has taken on three of history’s most important works of literature and applied their lessons to the present day. Enraged is an important reminder that reflection, dialogue, and empathy have no boundaries or time limits.”—Amanda Foreman, Whitbread Prize-winning author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire “[Anhalt’s study is] rewarding and unnerving . . . A call to arms.”—Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Download or read book Exploring Greek Myth written by Matthew Clark and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-03-02 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring Greek Myth offers an extensive discussion of variant forms of myths and lesser-known stories, including important local myths and local versions of PanHellenic myths. Clark also discusses approaches to understanding myths, allowing students to gain an appreciation of the variety in one volume. Guides students from an introductory understanding of myths to a wide-ranging exploration of current scholarly approaches on mythology as a social practice and as an expression of thought Written in an informal conversational style appealing to students by an experienced lecturer in the field Offers extensive discussion of variant forms of myths and many lesser known, but deserving, stories Investigates a variety of approaches to the study of myth including: the sources of our knowledge of Greek myth, myth and ritual in ancient Greek society, comparative myth, myth and gender, hero cult, psychological interpretation of myth, and myth and philosophy Includes suggestions in each chapter for essays and research projects, as well as extensive lists of books and articles for further reading The author draws on the work of many leading scholars in the field in his exploration of topics throughout the text
Download or read book Savage Energies written by Walter Burkert and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-04 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We often think of classical Greek society as a model of rationality and order. Yet as Walter Burkert demonstrates in these influential essays on the history of Greek religion, there were archaic, savage forces surging beneath the outwardly calm face of classical Greece, whose potentially violent and destructive energies, Burkert argues, were harnessed to constructive ends through the interlinked uses of myth and ritual. For example, in a much-cited essay on the Athenian religious festival of the Arrephoria, Burkert uncovers deep connections between this strange nocturnal ritual, in which two virgin girls carried sacred offerings into a cave and later returned with something given to them there, and tribal puberty initiations by linking the festival with the myth of the daughters of Kekrops. Other chapters explore the origins of tragedy in blood sacrifice; the role of myth in the ritual of the new fire on Lemnos; the ties between violence, the Athenian courts, and the annual purification of the divine image; and how failed political propaganda entered the realm of myth at the time of the Persian Wars.
Download or read book Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth and Religion written by Menelaos Christopoulos and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-09-25 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth and Religion is a ground-breaking volume dedicated to a thorough examination of the well known empirical categories of light and darkness as it relates to modes of thought, beliefs and social behavior in Greek culture. With a systematic and multi-disciplinary approach, the book elucidates the light/darkness dichotomy in color semantics, appearance and concealment of divinities and creatures of darkness, the eye sight and the insight vision, and the role of the mystic or cultic.
Download or read book A Brief Guide to the Greek Myths written by Stephen P. Kershaw and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book leads the reader through these vibrant stories, from the origins of the gods through to the homecomings of the Trojan heroes. All the familiar narratives are here, along with some less familiar characters and motifs. In addition to the tales, the book explains key issues arising from the narratives, and discusses the myths and their wider relevance. This long-overdue book crystallises three key areas of interest: the nature of the tales; the stories themselves; and how they have and might be interpreted. For the first time, it brings together aspects of Greek mythology only usually available in disparate forms - namely children's books and academic works. There will be much here that is interesting, surprising, and strange as well as familiar. Experts and non-experts, adults, students and schoolchildren alike will gain entertainment and insight from this fascinating and important volume.
Download or read book The Divided City written by Nicole Loraux and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the roles of conflict and forgetting in ancient Athens. Athens, 403 B.C.E. The bloody oligarchic dictatorship of the Thirty is over, and the democrats have returned to the city victorious. Renouncing vengeance, in an act of willful amnesia, citizens call for---if not invent---amnesty. They agree to forget the unforgettable, the "past misfortunes," of civil strife or stasis. More precisely, what they agree to deny is that stasis---simultaneously partisanship, faction, and sedition---is at the heart of their politics. Continuing a criticism of Athenian ideology begun in her pathbreaking study The Invention of Athens, Nicole Loraux argues that this crucial moment of Athenian political history must be interpreted as constitutive of politics and political life and not as a threat to it. Divided from within, the city is formed by that which it refuses. Conflict, the calamity of civil war, is the other, dark side of the beautiful unitary city of Athens. In a brilliant analysis of the Greek word for voting, diaphora, Loraux underscores the conflictual and dynamic motion of democratic life. Voting appears as the process of dividing up, of disagreement---in short, of agreeing to divide and choose. Not only does Loraux reconceptualize the definition of ancient Greek democracy, she also allows the contemporary reader to rethink the functioning of modern democracy in its critical moments of internal stasis.
Download or read book Creators Conquerors and Citizens written by Robin Waterfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, accessible, and up-to-date history of the Ancient Greeks. Covering the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, and centred around the disunity of the Greeks, their underlying cultural unity, and their eventual political unification.
Download or read book Myths Legends Of Ancient Greece and Rome written by E.M. Berens and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-05-25 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive collection of all the major and minor gods of Rome and Greece, with descriptions of festivals and retellings of major mythological stories. E.M. Bernes thoroughly details each Greek and Roman god, goddess, hero, demi-god and creature and gives the reader a clear and succinct idea of the religious beliefs of the ancients. An exceptional book for those interested in Greek or Roman mythology.
Download or read book Embattled written by Emily Katz Anhalt and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive exploration of the way Greek myths empower us to defeat tyranny. As tyrannical passions increasingly plague twenty-first-century politics, tales told in ancient Greek epics and tragedies provide a vital antidote. Democracy as a concept did not exist until the Greeks coined the term and tried the experiment, but the idea can be traced to stories that the ancient Greeks told and retold. From the eighth through the fifth centuries BCE, Homeric epics and Athenian tragedies exposed the tyrannical potential of individuals and groups large and small. These stories identified abuses of power as self-defeating. They initiated and fostered a movement away from despotism and toward broader forms of political participation. Following her highly praised book Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths, the classicist Emily Katz Anhalt retells tales from key ancient Greek texts and proceeds to interpret the important message they hold for us today. As she reveals, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus's Oresteia, and Sophocles's Antigone encourage us—as they encouraged the ancient Greeks—to take responsibility for our own choices and their consequences. These stories emphasize the responsibilities that come with power (any power, whether derived from birth, wealth, personal talents, or numerical advantage), reminding us that the powerful and the powerless alike have obligations to each other. They assist us in restraining destructive passions and balancing tribal allegiances with civic responsibilities. They empower us to resist the tyrannical impulses not only of others but also in ourselves. In an era of political polarization, Embattled demonstrates that if we seek to eradicate tyranny in all its toxic forms, ancient Greek epics and tragedies can point the way.
Download or read book The Function of Mythology and Religion in Ancient Greek Society written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Greeks are prime subjects of study for those wishing to understand the roles that religion and mythology play in a society and how the two interact with each other. This paper covers what I feel after my study of Greek mythology and religion are the eight functions of mythology: history, education, explanation â both of the natural world and the culture of each society, legality, genesis, what happens after death, and entertainment; as well as the two function of religion: civic and spiritual. In the first chapter, in order to show each of the mythological functions, I summarize and explain a myth that falls primarily into each category. The second chapter discusses and illustrates Civic Religion and the third examines the three major Mystery Religions. The goal is to offer a basic understand of some of the myths, religious beliefs, and cult practices of the ancient Greeks.
Download or read book Thebes written by Paul Cartledge and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting, definitive account of the ancient Greek city of Thebes, by the acclaimed author of The Spartans—now in paperback Among the extensive writing available about the history of ancient Greece, there is precious little about the city-state of Thebes. At one point the most powerful city in ancient Greece, Thebes has been long overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta. In Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, acclaimed classicist and historian Paul Cartledge brings the city vividly to life and argues that it is central to our understanding of the ancient Greeks’ achievements—whether politically or culturally—and thus to the wider politico-cultural traditions of western Europe, the Americas, and indeed the world. From its role as an ancient political power, to its destruction at the hands of Alexander the Great as punishment for a failed revolt, to its eventual restoration by Alexander’s successor, Cartledge deftly chronicles the rise and fall of the ancient city. He recounts the history with deep clarity and mastery for the subject and makes clear both the di?erences and the interconnections between the Thebes of myth and the Thebes of history. Written in clear prose and illustrated with images in two color inserts, Thebes is a gripping read for students of ancient history and those looking to experience the real city behind the myths of Cadmus, Hercules, and Oedipus.
