Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Drunken Duchess of Vassar: Communication, Images, and Identity in the Classical World

The Drunken Duchess of Vassar: Communication, Images, and Identity in the Classical World

Bettini, Maurizio

Paperback

Literary CriticismAncient Rome

ISBN10: 0814256155
ISBN13: 9780814256152
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: Oct 9 2020
Pages: 296
Weight: 0.96
Height: 0.67 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Though in many respects similar to us moderns, the Greeks and Romans often conceived things differently than we do. The cultural inheritance we have received from them can therefore open our eyes to many manners of life we might otherwise overlook. The ancients told fascinating--but different--stories; they elaborated profound--but different--symbols. Above all, they confronted many of the problems we still face today--memory and forgetfulness; identity and its strategies; absolutist moralism and behavioral relativity--only in profoundly different ways, since their own cultural forms and resources were different. In The Ears of Hermes: Communication, Images, and Identity in the Classical World, renowned scholar and author Maurizio Bettini explores these different cultural experiences, choosing paths through this territory that are diverse and sometimes unexpected: a little-known variant of a myth or legend, such as that of Brutus pretending, like Hamlet, to be a Fool; a proverb, like lupus in fabula (the wolf in the tale), that expresses the sense of foreboding aroused by the sudden arrival of someone who was just the subject of conversation; or great works, like Plautus' Amphitruo and Vergil's Aeneid, where we encounter the mysteries of the Doppelgänger and of doubles fabricated to ease the pain of nostalgia. Or the etymology of a word--its own story--leads us down some unforeseen avenue of discovery. While scholarly in presentation, this book, in an elegant English translation by William Michael Short, will appeal not only to classicists but also students, as well as to anthropologists and historians of art and literature beyond classics.

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