A01=Bruce S Thornton
Adolescent Suicide Attempts
Adonis Gardens
ancient
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greek Sexuality
ancient social control
Aphrodite Ourania
Aphrodite's Power
aphrodites
Aphrodite’s Power
Author_Bruce S Thornton
beauty
Bestial Passions
Brother Apsyrtus
Bruce S. Thornton
Category=DSBB
Category=JHBK
Category=JMU
Category=NHB
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
classical studies sexuality
Destructive Excess
Energy Source
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Erotic Beauty
gender norms antiquity
greece
greek
Greek myth interpretation
Hellenistic Poet
homoeroticism analysis
Homosexual Eros
literature
Material Natural World
Nature's Beauty
Nature’s Beauty
origins of Western sexual attitudes
Passive Homosexual
Passive Homosexuality
Pedagogical Pederasty
Pederastic Relationship
Physical Gratification
power
Radical Sophists
rational
Rational Virtue
sexual
Sexual Beauty
sexual ethics history
Sexual Pessimism
virtue
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780813332260
- Weight: 430g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 Feb 1998
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality is a controversial book that lays bare the meanings Greeks gave to sex. Contrary to the romantic idealization of sex dominating our culture, the Greeks saw eros as a powerful force of nature, potentially dangerous and in need of control by society: Eros the Destroyer, not Cupid the Insipid, is what fired the Greek imagination. The destructiveness of eros can be seen in Greek imagery and metaphor, and in their attitudes toward women and homosexuals. Images of love as fire, disease, storms, insanity, and violence—top 40 song clichés for us—locate eros among the unpredictable and deadly forces of nature. The beautiful Aphrodite embodies the alluring danger of sex, and femmes fatales like Pandora and Helen represent the risky charms of female sexuality. And homosexuality typifies for the Greeks the frightening power of an indiscriminate appetite that threatens the stability of culture itself. In Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Seualily, Bruce Thornton offers a uniquely sweeping and comprehensive account of ancient sexuality free of currently fashionable theoretical jargon and pretensions. In its conclusions the book challenges the distortions of much recent scholarship on Greek sexuality. And throughout it links the wary attitudes of the Greeks to our present-day concerns about love, sex, and family. What we see, finally, are the origins of some of our own views as well as a vision of sexuality that is perhaps more honest and mature than our own dangerous illusions.
Bruce S. Thornton is professor of classics and chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages at California State University at Fresno.
