Stealing Helen
Regular price
€62.99
A01=Lowell Edmunds
Aeschylus
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Alcman
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greek
Anecdote
Aristophanes
Atreus
Author_Lowell Edmunds
automatic-update
Castor and Pollux
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSB
Category=JBGB
Category=JFHF
Classics
Clytemnestra
COP=United States
Cypria
Dawn goddess
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Encomium
Epic poetry
Epictetus
Epithalamium
Epithet
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Etymology
Euripides
Fiction
Figurine
Gorgias
Greek literature
Greek mythology
Guinevere
Hellenistic period
Herodotus
Heroides
Hesiod
Hexameter
Homer
Ibycus
Iconography
Iphigenia
Isocrates
Lacedaemon (mythology)
Language_English
Literature
Menelaion
Menelaus
Midir
Mycenae
N. (novella)
Narrative
Odysseus
Oral tradition
Oreste
PA=Available
Palinode
Parody
Poetry
Priam
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Pwyll
Rhiannon
Simon Magus
softlaunch
Sophocles
Stesichorus
Swan maiden
The Telling
The Various
Theban Cycle
Theoclymenus
Theocritus
Theseus
Thucydides
To Helen
Tragedy
Trojan War
Tyndareus
Valmiki
Wreath
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691165127
- Weight: 765g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 13 Oct 2015
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
It's a familiar story: a beautiful woman is abducted and her husband journeys to recover her. This story's best-known incarnation is also a central Greek myth--the abduction of Helen that led to the Trojan War. Stealing Helen surveys a vast range of folktales and texts exhibiting the story pattern of the abducted beautiful wife and makes a detailed comparison with the Helen of Troy myth. Lowell Edmunds shows that certain Sanskrit, Welsh, and Old Irish texts suggest there was an Indo-European story of the abducted wife before the Helen myth of the Iliad became known. Investigating Helen's status in ancient Greek sources, Edmunds argues that if Helen was just one trope of the abducted wife, the quest for Helen's origin in Spartan cult can be abandoned, as can the quest for an Indo-European goddess who grew into the Helen myth. He explains that Helen was not a divine essence but a narrative figure that could replicate itself as needed, at various times or places in ancient Greece. Edmunds recovers some of these narrative Helens, such as those of the Pythagoreans and of Simon Magus, which then inspired the Helens of the Faust legend and Goethe.
Stealing Helen offers a detailed critique of prevailing views behind the "real" Helen and presents an eye-opening exploration of the many sources for this international mythical and literary icon.
Lowell Edmunds is professor emeritus of classics at Rutgers University. He is the author of Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues and the editor of Approaches to Greek Myth.
