Euripides and the Gods

Euripides and the Gods PDF Author: Mary R. Lefkowitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199752052
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
"Offers a critical new perspective on a major classical author by one of the world's leading authorities; advances a new theory of Euripides' intentions, namely, that he is not trying to undermine traditional theology ..."--Https://global.oup.com.

Euripides and the Gods

Euripides and the Gods PDF Author: Mary R. Lefkowitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199752052
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
"Offers a critical new perspective on a major classical author by one of the world's leading authorities; advances a new theory of Euripides' intentions, namely, that he is not trying to undermine traditional theology ..."--Https://global.oup.com.

Gods in Euripides

Gods in Euripides PDF Author: Joan Josep Mussarra Roca
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 382336958X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : de
Pages : 237

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Book Description
This book is about the representation of gods (both as characters and as a subject for discourse) in two tragedies by Euripides: Heracles and Hippolytus. Its goal is to establish a framework for the reading of Greek tragedy and for the analysis of the various ways in which the gods of the Greek religion appear in tragic drama, and to apply it to the aforementioned plays.In this work we contend that such a framework should transcend the usual dichotomy made between a "religious" and a "non-religious" reading of Greek tragedy, and more specifically of Euripidean tragedy. This dichotomy contains in itself a cultural assumption, that is, the possibility of establishing a clear-cut distinction between a domain of religious discourse and an autonomous, profane sphere in which the representations of gods would assume a different value and meaning. There is nothing in the discursive structures of Classical Greece that allows us to posit something of the kind. The elements that appear to us as questioning the traditional representations of gods in Greek tragedy can be seen from this perspective.

Euripides and the Gods

Euripides and the Gods PDF Author: Mary R. Lefkowitz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic book
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Although readers continue to believe that in his dramas Euripides was questioning the nature and sometimes even the existence of the gods, and that through his dramas he sought to reveal the flaws in the traditional religious beliefs of his own time, this book argues that instead of seeking to undermine ancient religion, Euripides is describing with a brutal realism what the gods are like, and reminding his mortal audience of the limitations of human understanding.

Eating of the Gods

Eating of the Gods PDF Author: Jan Kott
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810107457
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In The Eating of the Gods the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed Shakespeare Our Contemporary, Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the Bacchae of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and "the joy of eating raw flesh" which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed.

Heracles and Other Plays

Heracles and Other Plays PDF Author: Euripides
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192832597
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
"There is death in Alcestis, which explores the marital relationship of Alcestis and Admetus with pathos and grim humour, but whose status as tragedy is subverted by a happy ending. The blood-soaked Heracles portrays deep emotional pain and undeserved suffering; its demand for a more humanistic ethics in the face of divine indifference and callousness makes it one of Euripides' more popular and profound plays. Children of Heracles is a rich and complex work, famous for its dialogues and monologues, in which the effects of war on refugees and the consequences of sheltering them are explored. In Cyclops Euripides takes the familiar story of Odysseus' escape from the Cyclops Polyphemus and turns it to hilarious comic effect."--BOOK JACKET.

Whom the Gods Would Destroy

Whom the Gods Would Destroy PDF Author: Richard Powell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description


Honor Thy Gods

Honor Thy Gods PDF Author: Jon D. Mikalson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469617188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
In Honor Thy Gods Jon Mikalson uses the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to explore popular religious beliefs and practices of Athenians in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and examines how these playwrights portrayed, manipulated, and otherwise represented popular religion in their plays. He discusses the central role of honor in ancient Athenian piety and shows that the values of popular piety are not only reflected but also reaffirmed in tragedies. Mikalson begins by examining what tragic characters and choruses have to say about the nature of the gods and their intervention in human affairs. Then, by tracing the fortunes of diverse characters -- among them Creon and Antigone, Ajax and Odysseus, Hippolytus, Pentheus, and even Athens and Troy -- he shows that in tragedy those who violate or challenge contemporary popular religious beliefs suffer, while those who support these beliefs are rewarded. The beliefs considered in Mikalson's analysis include Athenians' views on matters regarding asylum, the roles of guests and hosts, oaths, the various forms of divination, health and healing, sacrifice, pollution, the religious responsibilities of parents, children, and citizens, homicide, the dead, and the afterlife. After summarizing the vairous forms of piety and impiety related to these beliefs found in the tragedies, Mikalson isolates "honoring the gods" as the fundamental concept of Greek piety. He concludes by describing the different relationships of the three tragedians to the religion of their time and their audience, arguing that the tragedies of Euripides most consistently support the values of popular religion.

Greek Gods and Heroes

Greek Gods and Heroes PDF Author: Robert Graves
Publisher: Rosetta Books
ISBN: 0795336519
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 117

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Book Description
An accessible anthology of the greatest ancient Greek myths and legends for readers of all ages by the celebrated classicist and historical novelist. According to the myths, gods and goddesses of ancient Greece lived on Mount Olympus and ruled the world of mortals. Famous heroes shaped the course of history, beautiful women drew the gazes of gods and men alike, and the gods were both fickle in their favors and breathtakingly generous to those they smiled upon. From Midas’s tragic gift to the exploits of Hercules and the curse of Pandora, Robert Graves brings the legends of ancient Greece to life in a way that’s sure to appeal to everyone; from children to adults, and from casual readers to serious scholars. “Directly told, with no attempt to oversimplify them, a good deal of the symbolism and the association with the pattern of ancient Greece survives.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review).

The Hippoloytus of Euripides

The Hippoloytus of Euripides PDF Author: Euripides
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : el
Pages : 96

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Book Description


Battling the Gods

Battling the Gods PDF Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.