Author: Jan N. Bremmer
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042918436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
The Strange World of Human Sacrifice is the first modern collection of studies on one of the most gruesome and intriguing aspects of religion. The volume starts with a brief introduction, which is followed by studies of Aztec human sacrifice and the literary motif of human sacrifice in medieval Irish literature. Turning to ancient Greece, three cases of human sacrifice are analysed: a ritual example, a mythical case, and one in which myth and ritual are interrelated. The early Christians were the victims of accusations of human sacrifice, but in turn imputed the crime to heterodox Christians, just as the Jews imputed the crime to their neighbours. The ancient Egyptians rarely seem to have practised human sacrifice, but buried the pharaoh's servants with him in order to serve him in the afterlife, albeit only for a brief period at the very beginning of pharaonic civilization. In ancient India we can follow the traditions of human sacrifice from the earliest texts up to modern times, where especially in eastern India goddesses, such as Kali, were long worshipped with human victims. In Japanese tales human sacrifice often takes the form of self-sacrifice, and there may well be a line from these early sacrifices to modern kamikaze. The last study throws a surprising light on human sacrifice in China. The volume is concluded with a detailed index
Author: H. Allenger
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1475954506
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 419
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Book Description
After Polyxena, daughter of King Priam of Troy, is chosen as Neoptolemuss love interest, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery that leads to a surprising conclusion about her destiny. Troy has just fallen, leaving the city in ruins and at the mercy of the Greeks. Neoptolemus has claimed the daughter of the now-deceased King Priam of Troy as his love prize. After she rejects his advances, he angrily contrives a story that dooms the ill-fated Polyxena. She knows what she must do to survive, but unfortunately, she cannot change her destiny. Polyxena is mortified that Neoptolemus has fallen in love with her, for this means she must die at the commemoration rites for his father. As Polyxena prepares for the inevitable, she reflects over the past year, relating her thoughts to Aphrodite, the goddess she believes is responsible for orchestrating the events that have beleaguered her. As she tries to make sense of it all, Polyxena converses with all the well-known personages associated with the Trojan mythAchilles, Agamemnon, Cassandra, Helen, and many otherswhile seeking solace in the hope that her existence has not been futile. In this moving story of forbidden love, a young woman unwittingly becomes intertwined in the romantic legacy surrounding Troy, embarking on a journey of self-discovery that leads her to a surprising conclusion about the life she has lived.
Author: Joan Breton Connelly
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691127460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458
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Book Description
Cultural history of priestesses in the ancient Greek world. The author presents a picture of how priestesses lived and worked, from the most famous and sacred of them (e.g. the Delphic Oracle and the priestess of Athena Polias) - to basket bearers and handmaidens.
Author: Kristoffel Demoen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004171096
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 425
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Book Description
In this collection of interpretative essays on Flavius Philostratusa (TM) "Vita Apollonii," leading scholars and younger critics make for a combination of methodological continuity and innovation. The wide range of approaches does justice to the texta (TM)s high level of literary, historical and philosophical-religious sophistication.
Author: Elisabeth Meier Tetlow
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780826416292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
The ancient period of Greek history, to which this volume is devoted, began in late Bronze Age in the second millennium and lasted almost to the end of the first century BCE, when the last remnant of the Hellenistic empire created by Alexander the Great was conquered by the Romans. Extant texts of law of actual laws are few and often found embedded in other sources, such as the works of orators and historians. Greek literature, from the epics of Homer to the classical dramas, provides a valuable source of information. However, since literary sources are fictional portrayals and often reflect the times and biases of the authors, other more concrete evidence from archaeology has been used throughout the volume to confirm and contextualize the literary evidence about women, crime, and punishment in ancient Greece. The volume is divided into three parts: (I) Mykenean and Archaic Greece, (II) Classical Greece, and (III the Hellenistic Period. The book includes illustrations, maps, lists of Hellenistic dynasties, and Indices of Persons, Place and Subjects. Crime and punishment, criminal law and its administration, are areas of ancient history that have been explored less than many other aspects of ancient civilizations. Throughout history women have been affected by crime both as victims and as offenders. In the ancient world, customary laws were created by men, formal laws were written by men, and both were interpreted and enforced by men. This two-volume work explores the role of gender in the formation and administration of ancient law and examines the many gender categories and relationships established in ancient law, including legal personhood, access to courts, citizenship, political office, religious office, professions, marriage, inheritance, and property ownership. Thus it focuses on women and crime within the context of women in the society.
Author: John E. Thorburn
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 0816074984
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 689
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Book Description
Surveys important Greek and Roman authors, plays, characters, genres, historical figures and more.
Author: David Fredrick
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801869617
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Sharrock.--William C. Fitzgerald, University of California, Berkeley "American Historical Review"
Author: Holly A. Crocker
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812251415
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
If material bodies have inherent, animating powers—or virtues, in the premodern sense—then those bodies typically and most insistently associated in the premodern period with matter—namely, women—cannot be inert and therefore incapable of ethical action, Holly Crocker contends. In The Matter of Virtue, Crocker argues that one idea of what it means to be human—a conception of humanity that includes vulnerability, endurance, and openness to others—emerges when we consider virtue in relation to modes of ethical action available to premodern women. While a misogynistic tradition of virtue ethics, from antiquity to the early modern period, largely cast a skeptical or dismissive eye on women, Crocker seeks to explore what happened when poets thought about the material body not as a tool of an empowered agent whose cultural supremacy was guaranteed by prevailing social structures but rather as something fragile and open, subject but also connected to others. After an introduction that analyzes Hamlet to establish a premodern tradition of material virtue, Part I investigates how retellings of the demise of the title female character in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida among other texts structure a poetic debate over the potential for women's ethical action in a world dominated by masculine violence. Part II turns to narratives of female sanctity and feminine perfection, including ones by Chaucer, Bokenham, and Capgrave, to investigate grace, beauty, and intelligence as sources of women's ethical action. In Part III, Crocker examines a tension between women's virtues and household structures, paying particular attention to English Griselda- and shrew-literatures, including Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. She concludes by looking at Chaucer's Legend of Good Women to consider alternative forms of virtuous behavior for women as well as men.
Author: Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801480911
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
What should we make of the prominence of female characters in the plays of Euripides? Not, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz concludes, that he was either a misogynist or a feminist before his time. Tracking the relationship between male anxiety and female desire in his drama, she demonstrates in this rich and incisive book that Euripides' plays support a structure of male dominance while simultaneously inscribing female strength.
Author: Sophia Papaioannou
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110204304
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
The book is a detailed study on the structure and the topics of Ovid’s compedium of the Trojan Saga in Metamorphoses 12.1-13.622, the section also referred to as the “Little Iliad”. It explores the motives and the objectives behind the selected narrative moments from the Epic Cycle that found their way into the Ovidian version of the Trojan War. By thoroughly mastering and inspiringly refashioning a vast amount of literary material, Ovid generates a systematic reconstruction of the archetypal hero, Achilles. Thus, he projects himself as a worthy successor of Homer in the epic tradition, a master epicist, and a par to his great Latin predecessor, Vergil.
