[PDF] Rationalizing Myth In Antiquity eBook

Author : Greta Hawes
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 28,91 MB
Release : 2014-05-29
Category : History
ISBN : 0191653403

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The Greek myths are characteristically fabulous; they are full of monsters, metamorphoses, and the supernatural. However, they could be told in other ways as well. This volume charts ancient dissatisfaction with the excesses of myth, and the various attempts to cut these stories down to size by explaining them as misunderstood accounts of actual events. In the hands of ancient rationalizers, the hybrid forms of the Centaurs become early horse-riders, seen from a distance; the Minotaur the result of an illicit liaison, not an inter-species love affair; and Cerberus, nothing more than a notorious snake with a lethal bite. Such approaches form an indigenous mode of ancient myth criticism, and show Greeks grappling with the value and utility of their own narrative traditions. Rationalizing interpretations offer an insight into the practical difficulties inherent in distinguishing myth from history in ancient Greece, and indeed the fragmented nature of myth itself as a conceptual entity. By focusing on six Greek authors (Palaephatus, Heraclitus, Excerpta Vaticana, Conon, Plutarch, and Pausanias) and tracing the development of rationalistic interpretation from the fourth century BC to the Second Sophistic (first to second centuries AD) and beyond, Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity shows that, far from being marginalized as it has been in the past, rationalization should be understood as a fundamental component of the pluralistic and shifting network of Greek myth as it was experienced in antiquity.

Author : Greta Hawes
Publisher :
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 17,24 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Greek literature
ISBN : 9780191775253

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The Greek myths are characteristically fabulous; they are full of monsters, metamorphoses, and the supernatural. However, they could be told in other ways as well. This volume charts ancient dissatisfaction with the excesses of myth, and the various attempts to cut these stories down to size by explaining them as misunderstood accounts of actual events.

Author : Greta Hawes
Publisher :
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 24,47 MB
Release : 2014-05
Category : History
ISBN : 0199672776

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The Greek myths are characteristically fabulous; they are full of monsters, metamorphoses, and the supernatural. However, they could be told in other ways as well. This volume charts ancient dissatisfaction with the excesses of myth, and the various attempts to cut these stories down to size by explaining them as misunderstood accounts of actual events. In the hands of ancient rationalizers, the hybrid forms of the Centaurs become early horse-riders, seen from a distance; the Minotaur the result of an illicit liaison, not an inter-species love affair; and Cerberus, nothing more than a notorious snake with a lethal bite. Such approaches form an indigenous mode of ancient myth criticism, and show Greeks grappling with the value and utility of their own narrative traditions. Rationalizing interpretations offer an insight into the practical difficulties inherent in distinguishing myth from history in ancient Greece, and indeed the fragmented nature of myth itself as a conceptual entity. By focusing on six Greek authors (Palaephatus, Heraclitus, Excerpta Vaticana, Conon, Plutarch, and Pausanias) and tracing the development of rationalistic interpretation from the fourth century BC to the Second Sophistic (1st-2nd centuries AD) and beyond, Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity shows that, far from being marginalized as it has been in the past, rationalization should be understood as a fundamental component of the pluralistic and shifting network of Greek myth as it was experienced in antiquity.

Author : Greta Hawes
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 351 pages
File Size : 23,37 MB
Release : 2017
Category : History
ISBN : 0198744773

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Polybius boldly declared that 'now that all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is no longer appropriate to use poets and writers of myth as witnesses of the unknown' (4.40.2). And yet, in reality, the significance of myth did not diminish as the borders of the known world expanded. Storytelling was always an inextricable part of how the ancient Greeks understood their environment; mythic maps existed alongside new, more concrete, methods of charting the contours of the earth. Specific landscape features acted as repositories of myth and spurred their retelling; myths, in turn, shaped and gave sense to natural and built environments, and were crucial to the conceptual resonances of places both unknown and known. This volume brings together contributions from leading scholars of Greek myth, literature, history, and archaeology to examine the myriad intricate ways in which ancient Greek myth interacted with the physical and conceptual landscapes of antiquity. The diverse range of approaches and topics highlights in particular the plurality and pervasiveness of such interactions. The collection as a whole sheds new light on the central importance of storytelling in Greek conceptions of space.

Author : Greta Hawes
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 19,46 MB
Release : 2021-09-16
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0192568698

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Greek myth comes to us through many different channels. Our best source for the ways that local communities told and used these stories is a travel guide from the second century AD, the Periegesis of Pausanias. Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of ancient Greek myth as a living, local tradition. He shows us that the physical landscape was nothing without the stories of heroes and gods that made sense of it, and reveals what was at stake in claims to possess the past. He also demonstrates how myths guided curious travellers to particular places, the kinds of responses they provoked, and the ways they could be tested or disputed. The Periegesis attests to a form of cultural tourism we would still recognise: it is animated by the desire to see for oneself distant places previously only read about. It shows us how travellers might map the literary landscapes that they imagined on to the reality, and how locals might package their cities to meet the demands of travellers' expectations. In Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth, Greta Hawes uses Pausanias's text to illuminate the spatial dynamics of myth. She reveals the significance of local stories in an Empire connected by a shared literary repertoire, and the unifying power of a tradition made up paradoxically of narratives that took diverse, conflicting forms on the ground. We learn how storytelling and the physical infrastructures of the Greek mainland were intricately interwoven such that the decline or flourishing of the latter affected the archive of myth that Pausanias transmits.

Author : G. S. Kirk
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 20,87 MB
Release : 1973-06-08
Category : History
ISBN : 0520023897

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This book, developed out of the 1969 Sather lectures at Berkeley, California, confronts a wide range of problems concerning the nature, meaning and functions of myths. Professor Kirk's aim is to introduce a degree of coherence and of critical awareness into a subject that arouses profound interest today, but which for too long has been the target of excessive theorizing and interdisciplinary confusion between anthropologists, sociologists, classicists, philosophers and psychologists. Professor Kirk begins by discussing the relation of myths to rituals and folktales, and the weakness of universalist theories of function. He then subjects Lévi-Strauss's structuralist theory to an extended exposition and criticism; he considers the character and meaning of ancient Near Eastern myths, their influence on Greece, and the special forms with rational modes of thought, and finally, he assesses the status of myths as expressions of the unconscious, as elements of dreams, universal symbols, as accidents along the way to some narrative objective. The result is a significant critical venture into the history and philosophy of thought, imagination, symbol and society.--From publisher description.

Author : Harald Haarmann
Publisher : Harrassowitz
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 15,47 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Greece
ISBN : 9783447103626

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The perception of intellectual life in Greek antiquity by the representatives of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century favoured the establishment of the cult of reason. Myth as a potential source of knowledge was disregarded: instead, the monopoly of truth-finding through pure rationalisation was asserted. This tendency, positing, as it did, reason in opposition to myth, did a signal disservice to the realities of intellectual life among the ancient Greeks. Nevertheless, these distortions of the Enlightenment have conditioned our approach to education and have led to our privileging of reason as a mode of enquiry right up to the present day. The ancient Greek intellectuals (i.e. the pre-Socratic philosophers, the early historiographers, philosophers of the classical age) did not set myth (mythos) and reason (logos) in opposition to each other. In fact, they benefited from both as differing modes of enquiry, each in its own right and possessing its own value. Plato, in his reasoning, was much concerned with the proper use of mythical narrative. In one of his dialogues, he even coined a new term for explaining how mythical topics and motifs should be exploited as a source of knowledge. This term is mythologia, and it first occurs in Plato's Republic (394b). The present study aims to offer a corrective to traditional cliches and received wisdom about intellectual life in ancient Greece. The work proposes, and aims to reconstruct, a mental landscape in which myth and reason connect and vividly interact, and in which the concepts of mythos and logos are intertwined in the terminological network of the ancient Greek language.

Author : Vanda Zajko
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 36,77 MB
Release : 2017-04-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1444339605

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A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology presents a collection of essays that explore a wide variety of aspects of Greek and Roman myths and their critical reception from antiquity to the present day. Reveals the importance of mythography to the survival, dissemination, and popularization of classical myth from the ancient world to the present day Features chronologically organized essays that address different sets of myths that were important in each historical era, along with their thematic relevance Features chronologically organized essays that address different sets of myths that were important in each historical era, along with their thematic relevance Offers a series of carefully selected in-depth readings, including both popular and less well-known examples

Author : Palaephatus
Publisher : Bolchazy Carducci Pub
Page : 167 pages
File Size : 40,32 MB
Release : 1996-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780865163102

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On Unbelievable Tales is an early effort to rationalize oft-told tales of the heroes and monstrous creatures of Greek mythology. Palaephatus, a contemporary of Aristotle, sought to reinforce belief in the historicity of ancient heroes by tracing the evolution of "actual" events into legendary and mythological accounts. This dual-language edition features introduction with in-depth examination of the work and history of Palaephatus, the first available English translation, notes on the ancient sources for over 40 tales, and notes and Greek text from the Teubner 1902 edition.