Jean-Pierre Vernant Book order

Exploring the rich tapestry of Greek mythology, Vernant's retelling begins with the Earth's creation from Chaos and unfolds through pivotal events such as Uranus's castration and the Titan-Olympian conflict. The narrative highlights memorable figures like Prometheus, Zeus, and Pandora, alongside epic tales from the Trojan War to Odysseus's journey, and the fates of Dionysus and Oedipus. Vernant's unique storytelling style brings these ancient myths to life, making them accessible and engaging for modern readers.

Exploring the interplay between mythos and logos, this classic work delves into their significance across various contexts. It challenges readers to reconsider traditional concepts and encourages a deeper understanding of narrative and reason. Through its multifaceted approach, the book invites an examination of how these elements shape human thought and culture, making it a thought-provoking read for those interested in philosophy and literary analysis.

In this engrossing retelling of Greek myth, Jean-Pierre Vernant combines his profound knowledge of the subject with brilliant and original story-telling. Beginning with the creation of Earth out of Chaos, Vernant continues with the castration of Uranus, the war between the Titans and the gods of Olympus, the wily ruses of Prometheus and Zeus, and the creation of Pandora, the first woman. His narrative takes us from the Trojan War to the voyage of Odysseus, from the story of Dionysus to the terrible destiny of Oedipus and to Perseus's confrontation with the Gorgons. Jean-Pierre Vernant has devoted himself to the study of Greek mythology. In recounting these tales, he unravels for us their multiple meanings and brings to life cherished figures of legend whose stories lie at the origin of our civilization.

With Ancestor of the West , three distinguished French historians reveal the story of the birth of writing and reason, demonstrating how the logical religious structures of Near Eastern and Mesopotamian cultures served as precursors to those of the West. "Full of matter for anyone interested in language, religion, and politics in the ancient world."—R. T. Ridley, Journal of Religious History "In this accessible introduction to the ancient world, three leading French scholars explore the emergence of rationality and writing in the West, tracing its development and its survival in our own traditions. . . . Jean Bottero focuses on writing and religion in ancient Mesopotamia, Clarisse Herrenschmidt considers a broader history of ancient writing, and Jean-Pierre Vernant examines classical Greek civilization in the context of Near Eastern history."— Translation Review

Jean Pierre-Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are leaders in a contemporary French classical scholarship that has produced a a stunning reconfiguration of Greek thought and literature. In this work, published here as a single volume, the authors present a disturbing and decidedly non-classical reading of Greek tragedy that insists on its radical discontinuity with our own outlook and with our social, aesthetic, and psychological categories. Originally published in French in two volumes, this new single-volume edition includes revised essays from volume one and is the first English translation of both volumes.

In this groundbreaking study, Jean-Pierre Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece takes us far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon to reveal a fundamentally other culture -- one of slavery, of masks and death, of scapegoats, of ritual hunting, and of ecstasies. Vernant's provocative discussions of various institutions and practices (including war, marriage, and sacrifice) detail the complex intersection of the religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. The book concludes with Vernant's authoritative genealogy of the study of myth from Antiquity to structuralism and beyond. "Myth," he writes, "brings into operation a form of logic which we may describe, unlike the logic of noncontradiction of the philosophers, as a logic of the ambiguous and the equivocal."

Jean-Pierre Vernant's concise, brilliant essay on the origins of Greek thought relates the cultural achievement of the ancient Greeks to their physical and social environment and shows that what they believed in was inseparable from the way they...