Myth and History in Ancient Greece

Myth and History in Ancient Greece

Author: Claude Calame

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2003-07-22

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 0691114587

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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.


Hand of Isis

Hand of Isis

Author: Jo Graham

Publisher: Hachette+ORM

Published: 2009-03-03

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0316040770

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Following her acclaimed debut, Jo Graham returns to the ancient world with a novel that will captivate lovers of fantasy, history and romance. Set in Ancient Egypt, Hand of Isis is the story of Charmian, a handmaiden, and her two sisters. It is a novel of lovers who transcend death, of gods who meddle in mortal affairs, and of women who guide empires.


Myth and History

Myth and History

Author: Jean Holm

Publisher: Burns & Oates

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13:

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Considerable work has been done on the European exploration of myth, first in the Renaissance and then in the nineteenth century. This book covers an area that is new territory by looking at ways in which this work can contribute to an understanding of the primacy of myth in religious life. The authors examine the idea of 'mythistory' - the complex relationship in religions between myth and history - and explore the different ways in which religious storytelling is related to the particular enterprise of storytelling that is called history.


Mythistory

Mythistory

Author: Joseph Mali

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2003-05

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0226502627

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Ever since Herodotus declared in Histories that to preserve the memories of the great achievements of the Greeks and other nations he would count on their own stories, historians have debated whether and how they should deal with myth. Most have sided with Thucydides, who denounced myth as "unscientific" and banished it from historiography. In Mythistory, Joseph Mali revives this oldest controversy in historiography. Contesting the conventional opposition between myth and history, Mali advocates instead for a historiography that reconciles the two and recognizes the crucial role that myth plays in the construction of personal and communal identities. The task of historiography, he argues, is to illuminate, not eliminate, these fictions by showing how they have passed into and shaped historical reality. Drawing on the works of modern theorists and artists of myth such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, Joyce and Eliot, Mali redefines modern historiography and relates it to the older notion and tradition of "mythistory." Tracing the origins and transformations of this historiographical tradition from the ancient world to the modern, Mali shows how Livy and Machiavelli sought to recover true history from uncertain myth-and how Vico and Michelet then reversed this pattern of inquiry, seeking instead to recover a deeper and truer myth from uncertain history. In the heart of Mythistory, Mali turns his attention to four thinkers who rediscovered myth in and for modern cultural history: Jacob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, Ernst Kantorowicz, and Walter Benjamin. His elaboration of the different biographical and historiographical routes by which all four sought to account for the persistence and significance of myth in Western civilization opens up new perspectives for an alternative intellectual history of modernity-one that may better explain the proliferation of mythic imageries of redemption in our secular, all too secular, times.


Splitting the Difference

Splitting the Difference

Author: Wendy Doniger

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1999-06

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780226156408

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Hindu and Greek mythologies teem with stories of women and men who are doubled. This text recounts and compares a range of these. The comparisons show that differences in gender are more significant than differences in culture.


Give Me an Answer

Give Me an Answer

Author: Cliffe Knechtle

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 1986-03-31

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9780877845690

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Cliffe Knechtle offers clear, reasoned and compassionate responses to the tough questions skeptics ask.


A Brief Guide to the Greek Myths

A Brief Guide to the Greek Myths

Author: Stephen P. Kershaw

Publisher: Robinson

Published: 2013-02-07

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1472107543

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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.


Greek Myth and the Bible

Greek Myth and the Bible

Author: Bruce Louden

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0429828047

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Since the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the Gilgamesh epic, we have known that the Bible imports narratives from outside of Israelite culture, refiguring them for its own audience. Only more recently, however, has come the realization that Greek culture is also a prominent source of biblical narratives. Greek Myth and the Bible argues that classical mythological literature and the biblical texts were composed in a dialogic relationship. Louden examines a variety of Greek myths from a range of sources, analyzing parallels between biblical episodes and Hesiod, Euripides, Argonautic myth, selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Homeric epic. This fascinating volume offers a starting point for debate and discussion of these cultural and literary exchanges and adaptations in the wider Mediterranean world and will be an invaluable resource to students of the Hebrew Bible and the influence of Greek myth.