The Mythology of Cyprus

The Mythology of Cyprus PDF Author: Stass Paraskos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780992924775
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
Written by the celebrated Cypriot artist Stass Paraskos, the Mythology of Cyprus is an immensely readable and truly entertaining journey through the pagan world of ancient Cyprus, when the island really was the Land of Aphrodite, goddess of love. First published in 1981, the book was a pioneering exploration of the way ancient Greek mythology was understood in a regional location such as Cyprus. As Michael Paraskos explains in his new introduction, the book was written at a time when few academics bothered to pay much attention to Cyprus, and many Cypriots themselves preferred to see their island's history and culture as no more than an extension of Greece or Turkey, rather than a unique phenomenon in its own right. The publication of this book set down a challenge to those narratives, presenting for the first time a uniquely Cypriot view of ancient Greek mythology ad folklore, written by a Cypriot. With special excursions into surviving influences of pagan belief and practise in modern Cyprus, and a fictionalised journey around pre-Christian Cyprus in the company of a character named Bronteas, the Mythology of Cyprus is joy to read.

The Mythology of Cyprus

The Mythology of Cyprus PDF Author: Stass Paraskos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780992924775
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Get Book Here

Book Description
Written by the celebrated Cypriot artist Stass Paraskos, the Mythology of Cyprus is an immensely readable and truly entertaining journey through the pagan world of ancient Cyprus, when the island really was the Land of Aphrodite, goddess of love. First published in 1981, the book was a pioneering exploration of the way ancient Greek mythology was understood in a regional location such as Cyprus. As Michael Paraskos explains in his new introduction, the book was written at a time when few academics bothered to pay much attention to Cyprus, and many Cypriots themselves preferred to see their island's history and culture as no more than an extension of Greece or Turkey, rather than a unique phenomenon in its own right. The publication of this book set down a challenge to those narratives, presenting for the first time a uniquely Cypriot view of ancient Greek mythology ad folklore, written by a Cypriot. With special excursions into surviving influences of pagan belief and practise in modern Cyprus, and a fictionalised journey around pre-Christian Cyprus in the company of a character named Bronteas, the Mythology of Cyprus is joy to read.

Greek Gods and Heroes in Ancient Cyprus

Greek Gods and Heroes in Ancient Cyprus PDF Author: Vassos Karageorghis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789607059086
Category : Art, Cypriot
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description


Aphrodite

Aphrodite PDF Author: Monica S. Cyrino
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136615911
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
Aphrodite explores the many myths and meanings of the Greek goddess of love, sex and beauty. One of the most widely worshipped and popular deities in Greek antiquity, Aphrodite emerges from the imaginations of the ancient Greek writers and artists as a multifaceted, powerful and charismatic figure. This volume explores the importance of Aphrodite for the ancient Greeks, as well as her enduring influence as a symbol of beauty, adornment, love and sexuality in contemporary culture. In a wide-ranging investigation of the universality of Aphrodite’s power and significance, this volume illuminates the numerous intricate levels of divinity embodied by the alluring figure of Aphrodite. Aphrodite offers new insights into the ancient texts and artistic representations of the goddess, as well as a comprehensive survey of the current scholarship about the origins and interpretations of Aphrodite, whilst also highlighting her eternal popular appeal across cultures and generations. A goddess of love who is not afraid to enter the battlefield; a goddess of bodily adornment who is the first to appear totally nude; a goddess born of the sea who emerges into the open sky: Aphrodite is a polyvalent deity, plural in nature, function and significance.

Greek Gods & Goddesses

Greek Gods & Goddesses PDF Author: Britannica Educational Publishing
Publisher: Britannica Educational Publishing
ISBN: 1622751531
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Giving Western literature and art many of its most enduring themes and archetypes, Greek mythology and the gods and goddesses at its core are a fundamental part of the popular imagination. At the heart of Greek mythology are exciting stories of drama, action, and adventure featuring gods and goddesses, who, while physically superior to humans, share many of their weaknesses. Readers will be introduced to the many figures once believed to populate Mount Olympus as well as related concepts and facts about the Greek mythological tradition.

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours PDF Author: Gregory Nagy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674244192
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized. “Fascinating, often ingenious... A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.” —Times Literary Supplement “Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and...against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature... [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.” —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

The Lost Books of the Odyssey

The Lost Books of the Odyssey PDF Author: Zachary Mason
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429952490
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
A BRILLIANT AND BEGUILING REIMAGINING OF ONE OF OUR GREATEST MYTHS BY A GIFTED YOUNG WRITER Zachary Mason's brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer's classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer's original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary page-turner that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.

Greek Gods, Human Lives

Greek Gods, Human Lives PDF Author: Mary R. Lefkowitz
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300107692
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Insightful and fun, this new guide to an ancient mythology explains why the Greek gods and goddesses are still so captivating to us, revisiting the work of Homer, Ovid, Virgil, and Shakespeare in search of the essence of these stories. (Mythology & Folklore)

The Uses of Greek Mythology

The Uses of Greek Mythology PDF Author: Ken Dowden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134926278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In an innovative sequence of topics, Ken Dowden explores the uses Greeks made of myth and the uses to which we can put myth in recovering the richness of their culture. Most aspects of Greek life and history - including war, religion and sexuality - which are discernable through myth, as well as most modern approaches, are given a context in a book which is designed to be useful, accessible and stimulating.

Greek Myth and the Bible

Greek Myth and the Bible PDF Author: Bruce Louden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429828047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Since the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the Gilgamesh epic, we have known that the Bible imports narratives from outside of Israelite culture, refiguring them for its own audience. Only more recently, however, has come the realization that Greek culture is also a prominent source of biblical narratives. Greek Myth and the Bible argues that classical mythological literature and the biblical texts were composed in a dialogic relationship. Louden examines a variety of Greek myths from a range of sources, analyzing parallels between biblical episodes and Hesiod, Euripides, Argonautic myth, selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Homeric epic. This fascinating volume offers a starting point for debate and discussion of these cultural and literary exchanges and adaptations in the wider Mediterranean world and will be an invaluable resource to students of the Hebrew Bible and the influence of Greek myth.

Travelling Heroes

Travelling Heroes PDF Author: Robin Lane Fox
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141889861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 611

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Book Description
This remarkable and daringly original book proposes a new way of thinking about the Greeks and their myths in the age of the great Homeric hymns. It combines a lifetime's familiarity with Greek literature and history with the latest archeological discoveries and the author's own journeys to the main sites in the story to describe how particular Greeks of the eighth century BC travelled east and west around the Mediterranean, and how their extraordinary journeys shaped their ideas of their gods and heroes. It gathers together stories and echoes from many different ancient cultures, not just the Greek - Assyria, Egypt, the Phoenician traders - and ranges from Mesopotamia to the Rio Tinto at Huelva in modern Portugal. Its central point is the Jebel Aqra, the great mountain on the north Syrian coast which Robin Lane Fox dubs 'the southern Olympus', and around which much of the action of the book turns. Robin Lane Fox rejects the fashionable view of Homer and his near-contemporary Hesiod as poets who owed a direct debt to texts and poems from the near East, and by following the trail of the Greek travellers shows that they were, rather, in debt to their own countrymen. With characteristic flair he reveals how these travellers, progenitors of tales which have inspired writers and historians for thousands of years, understood the world before the beginnings of philosophy and western thought.