Greek Mythology: An Introduction - Hardcover

Graf

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801846579 ISBN 13: 9780801846571

Publisher: John Hopkins University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Allegorists in ancient Greece attempted to find philosophical and physical truths in myth. Plato, who resolutely excluded myths from the sphere of truth, thought that they could express ideas in a realm he could not reach with dialectical reasoning. Freud built a science around the myth of Oedipus, saying that myths were "distorted wish dreams of entire nations, the dreams of early mankind". No body of myth has served more purposes - or been subject to more analysis - than Greek mythology. This is a revised translation of Fritz Graf's acclaimed introduction to Greek mythology, "Griechische Mythologie: Eine Einfuehrung", originally published in 1985 by Artemis Verlag. Graf offers a chronological account of the principal Greek myths that appear in the surviving literary and artistic sources, and concurrently documents the history of interpretation of Greek mythology from the 17th century to the present. First surveying the various definitions of myth that have been advanced, Graf proceeds to look at the relationship between Greek myths and epic poetry; the absence of an "origin of man" myth in Greek mythology; the connection between particular myths and shrines or holy festivals; the harmony in Greek literature becween myth and history; the use of myth in Greek song and tragedy; and the uses and interpretations of myth by philosophers and allegorists.

About this title

About the Author

Fritz Graf is professor of philology in the Seminar for Classical Philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Thomas Marier is in the Department of Classics at the Johns Hopkins University.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801846579
• ISBN 13: 9780801846571
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264