Hermes The Thief: The Evolution Of A Myth - Hardcover

Brown, Norman Oliver

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1258443694 ISBN 13: 9781258443696

Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2012

Synopsis

Hermes - trickster and culture hero, divine child and patron of steady action, master of magic words, seducer and whisper - is a vital and complex figure in Greek mythology. Who is this tricky shapechanger? A classic, prescient work dealing with myth and cult which traces the evolution of Hermes from sacred stoneheap and phallus to Homeric Hymn to Hermes and the Hesiodic poems.

About this title

About the Author:

Norman Oliver Brown (1913-2002) was an American intellectual of wide ranging interests, graduating from Oxford with an MA and from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a Ph.D. in the Classics. During World War II, Brown worked for the OSS as a specialist on French culture and later became Professor of Classics at Wesleyan University. In the late 1960s, he moved on to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was named Professor of Humanities. His initial work in classics betrayed a Marxist bent (his commentary to Hesiod's Theogony and his first monograph, Hermes the Thief). Following his disenchantment with real politics in the wake of the 1948 presidential election, Brown turned to a deep study of the works of Freud, which culminated in his classic 1959 study Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History. During his long residence at Santa Cruz, his interests broadened to include James Joyce, classical poetry and mythology, and a deep study of Islam. Many of his later writings were collected in the anthology Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis.

About this edition

• Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1258443694
• ISBN 13: 9781258443696
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 174