Marcel Detienne's Books

The Gardens of Adonis

Spices in Greek Mythology - Second Edition

By: Marcel Detienne

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The Gardens of Adonis

Spices in Greek Mythology - Second Edition

By: Marcel Detienne

Rich with implications for the history of sexuality, gender issues, and patterns of Hellenic literary imagining, Marcel Detienne's landmark book recasts long-standing ideas about the fertility myth of Adonis. The author challenges Sir James Frazer's thesis that the vegetation god Adonis-- whose premature death was mourned by women and whose resurrection marked a joyous occasion--represented the annual cycle of growth and decay in agriculture. Using the analytic tools of structuralism, Detienne shows instead that the festivals of Adonis depict a seductive but impotent and fruitless deity--whose physical ineptitude led to his death in a boar hunt, after which his body was found in a lettuce patch. Contrasting the festivals of Adonis with the solemn ones dedicated to Demeter, the goddess of grain, he reveals the former as a parody and negation of the institution of marriage. Detienne considers the short-lived gardens that Athenian women planted in mockery for Adonis's festival, and explores the function of such vegetal matter as spices, mint, myrrh, cereal, and wet plants in religious practice and in a wide selection of myths. His inquiry exposes, among many things, attitudes toward sexual activities ranging from "perverse" acts to marital relations.

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Page Count

249

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691238332

ISBN 13

9780691238333

The Daily Life of the Greek Gods

By: Giulia Sissa,Marcel Detienne

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The Daily Life of the Greek Gods

By: Giulia Sissa,Marcel Detienne

Discusses the everyday life of the gods of the Iliad, including what their bodies were made of, how they received nourishment, their social life on Olympus and among humans, and their loves, festivities, and disputes.

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308

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Stanford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804736146

ISBN 13

9780804736145

The Greeks and Us

By: Marcel Detienne

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The Greeks and Us

By: Marcel Detienne

The human race is all too pre-disposed to think in terms of us and them. Europeans have always laid claim to the Ancient Greeks they are our Greeks, our ancestors but their legacy reaches further than we could ever imagine. Their influence stretches from the Japanese to the Cossacks, from Ancient Rome to Indonesia. In this path-breaking new volume, the great French historian Marcel Detienne focuses on Eurocentric approaches which have trumpeted the Greeks and their democratic practices as our ancestors and the superiority of the Western tradition to which they gave rise. He argues that such approaches can be seen as narrow-minded and often covertly nationalistic. Detienne advocates what he calls comparative anthropology which sets out to illuminate the comparisons and contrasts between the beliefs, practices and institutions of different ancient and modern societies. Detienne aims to put the Greeks in perspective among other civilisations and also to look afresh at questions of political structure, literacy, nationhood, intellect and mythology. The work of Marcel Detienne has made an enormous impact on our thinking about the Greeks in areas such as rationality, literacy and mythology, and in this new volume he challenges once again our conception of the Greeks and their impact on the modern world.

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Page Count

189

Publisher

Polity

Published Date

ISBN 10

0745639003

ISBN 13

9780745639000

The Gardens of Adonis

Spices in Greek Mythology - Second Edition

By: Marcel Detienne

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The Gardens of Adonis

Spices in Greek Mythology - Second Edition

By: Marcel Detienne

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249

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Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691238332

ISBN 13

9780691238333

The Writing of Orpheus

Greek Myth in Cultural Context

By: Marcel Detienne

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The Writing of Orpheus

Greek Myth in Cultural Context

By: Marcel Detienne

Winner of the Translation Prize for non-fiction from the French-American Foundation. Son of a mortal king and an immortal Muse, Orpheus possessed a gift for music unmatched among humans; with his lyre he could turn the course of rivers, drown the fatal song of the Sirens, and charm the denizens of the underworld. The allure of his music speaks through the myths and stories of the Greeks and Romans, who tell of his mysterious compositions, with lyrics that only the initiated could understand after undergoing secret rites. Where readers of subsequent centuries have been content to understand these mysteries as the stuff of obfuscation or mere folderol, Marcel Detienne finds in the writing of Orpheus a key to the thinking of the ancient Greeks. A profound understanding of ancient Greek myth in its cultural contexts allows Detienne to recover a cultural system from fragments and ephemera—to reproduce, with sensitivity to variation and nuance, the full richness of the mythological repertoire flowing from the writing of Orpheus. His investigation moves from the Orphic writings to broader mysteries: how Greek gods became myths, how myths informed later religious thinking, and how myths have come into play in polemics between competing religions. An eloquent answer to some of the most vexing questions about the myth of Orpheus and its far-reaching ramifications through time and culture, Detienne's work ultimately offers a major rethinking of Greek mythology.

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228

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801869544

ISBN 13

9780801869549

The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks

By: Marcel Detienne,Jean-Pierre Vernant

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The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks

By: Marcel Detienne,Jean-Pierre Vernant

For the Greeks, the sharing of cooked meats was the fundamental communal act, so that to become vegetarian was a way of refusing society. It follows that the roasting or cooking of meat was a political act, as the division of portions asserted a social order. And the only proper manner of preparing meat for consumption, according to the Greeks, was blood sacrifice. The fundamental myth is that of Prometheus, who introduced sacrifice and, in the process, both joined us to and separated us from the gods—and ambiguous relation that recurs in marriage and in the growing of grain. Thus we can understand why the ascetic man refuses both women and meat, and why Greek women celebrated the festival of grain-giving Demeter with instruments of butchery. The ambiguity coded in the consumption of meat generated a mythology of the "other"—werewolves, Scythians, Ethiopians, and other "monsters." The study of the sacrificial consumption of meat thus leads into exotic territory and to unexpected findings. In The Cuisine of Sacrifice, the contributors—all scholars affiliated with the Center for Comparative Studies of Ancient Societies in Paris—apply methods from structural anthropology, comparative religion, and philology to a diversity of topics: the relation of political power to sacrificial practice; the Promethean myth as the foundation story of sacrificial practice; representations of sacrifice found on Greek vases; the technique and anatomy of sacrifice; the interaction of image, language, and ritual; the position of women in sacrificial custom and the female ritual of the Thesmophoria; the mythical status of wolves in Greece and their relation to the sacrifice of domesticated animals; the role and significance of food-related ritual in Homer and Hesiod; ancient Greek perceptions of Scythian sacrificial rites; and remnants of sacrificial ritual in modern Greek practices.

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Page Count

288

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226143538

ISBN 13

9780226143538

Comparing the Incomparable

By: Marcel Detienne

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Comparing the Incomparable

By: Marcel Detienne

A deliberately post-deconstructionist manifesto against the dangers of incommensurability, Marcel Detienne's book argues for and engages in the constructive comparison of societies of a great temporal and spatial diversity.

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Page Count

131

Publisher

Stanford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804757496

ISBN 13

9780804757492

Making Media Theory

Thinking Critically with Technology

By: Marcel OGorman

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Making Media Theory

Thinking Critically with Technology

By: Marcel OGorman

Making Media Theory is about the study, practice, and hands-on design of media theory. It looks at experimental research methods and engages in media analysis, inviting readers to respond to and shape the materiality of media while carefully considering the implications of living in a technoculture. The author walks readers through the creation of digital objects to think with, where critical design practices serve as tools for exploring social and philosophical issues related to technological being and becoming.

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Page Count

240

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501358596

ISBN 13

9781501358593

The City in the Making

By: Marcel Hénaff

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The City in the Making

By: Marcel Hénaff

An ambitious, interdisciplinary exploration of the emergence of the urban phenomenon and its social, political and cultural dynamic.

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Page Count

143

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1783485280

ISBN 13

9781783485284

Comparing the Incomparable

By: Marcel Detienne

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Comparing the Incomparable

By: Marcel Detienne

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131

Publisher

Stanford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804757496

ISBN 13

9780804757492

The Greeks and Us

By: Marcel Detienne

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The Greeks and Us

By: Marcel Detienne

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184

Publisher

Polity

Published Date

ISBN 10

0745639011

ISBN 13

9780745639017

The Price of Truth

Gift, Money, and Philosophy

By: Marcel Hénaff,Jean-Louis Morhange

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The Price of Truth

Gift, Money, and Philosophy

By: Marcel Hénaff,Jean-Louis Morhange

Without stigmatizing commercial activity, this book takes a philosophical and anthropological look at the universe of the gift, debt, and money in the West from ancient Greece to the present in order to examine how and why knowledge has long been assumed to be priceless.

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Page Count

500

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804760829

ISBN 13

9780804760829

The Philosophers' Gift

Reexamining Reciprocity

By: Marcel Hénaff

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The Philosophers' Gift

Reexamining Reciprocity

By: Marcel Hénaff

The French philosopher and anthropologist examines contemporary philosophical conceptions of gift-giving, commercial exchange, and social cohesion. When it comes to giving, philosophers love to be the most generous. For them, every form of reciprocity is tainted by commercial exchange. Thinkers such as Derrida, Levinas, Henry, Marion, Ricoeur, Lefort, and Descombes, have made the gift central to their work, haunted by the requirement of disinterestedness. As an anthropologist as well as a philosopher, Hénaff worries that philosophy has failed to distinguish among various types of giving. The Philosophers’ Gift returns to the seminal work of Marcel Mauss to reexamine these thinkers through the anthropological tradition. Hénaff shows that reciprocity, rather than disinterestedness, is central to ceremonial giving and alliance, whereby the social bond specific to humans is proclaimed as a political bond. From the social fact of gift practices, Hénaff develops an original and profound theory of symbolism, the social, and the relationship between self and other, whether that other is an individual human being, the collective other of community and institution, or the impersonal other of the world. Winner of the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation

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360

Publisher

Fordham University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0823286487

ISBN 13

9780823286485

The Writing of Orpheus

Greek Myth in Cultural Context

By: Marcel Detienne

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The Writing of Orpheus

Greek Myth in Cultural Context

By: Marcel Detienne

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228

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801869544

ISBN 13

9780801869549

The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks

By: Marcel Detienne,Jean-Pierre Vernant

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The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks

By: Marcel Detienne,Jean-Pierre Vernant

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288

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226143538

ISBN 13

9780226143538

The Daily Life of the Greek Gods

By: Giulia Sissa,Marcel Detienne

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The Daily Life of the Greek Gods

By: Giulia Sissa,Marcel Detienne

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308

Publisher

Stanford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804736146

ISBN 13

9780804736145

Myth, Religion and Society

By: R. L. Gordon

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Myth, Religion and Society

By: R. L. Gordon

The essays in this volume explore different aspects of the relation between Greek myth and Greek thought between the Archaic period (Homer and Hesiod) and the Hellenistic period, highlighting both the continuities and the contrasts in the Greek interpretations and 'uses' of myth. With the exception of the essay by Louis Gernet, all bear traces of the authors; attempts to combine older views stemming essentially from Durkheim and his pupils with Levi-Strauss's version of structuralism. Because the potential field is unmanageably large this selection concentrates on four important areas: the value of Greek myth in revealing the underlying coherence of Greek views of divinity; the manner in which Greek myth constructed meanings for Greek culture as a whole by selecting and combining certain motifs derived from different areas of life; the relationship between myth and delicate areas of social existence such as the nature of the value of certain objects and the passage of individuals from one status to another; and finally, the role of the myth in providing 'forms' for breaking rules - both in order to confirm the norm and to provide symbolic and actuals means of escape from dominant social rules and meanings. This book should be of interest to students in a number of disciplines concerned with myth and ancient society.

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Page Count

328

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521296404

ISBN 13

9780521296403

Public Space and Democracy

By: Marcel Hénaff,Tracy B. Strong

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Public Space and Democracy

By: Marcel Hénaff,Tracy B. Strong

Moving from classical Greece to the present, Public Space and Democracy provides both historical accounts and a comparative analytical framework for understanding public space both as a place and as a product of various media, from speech to the Internet. These essays make a powerful case for thinking of modern technological developments not as the end of public space, but as an opportunity for reframing the idea of the public and of the public space as the locus of power.

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Page Count

254

Publisher

U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816633878

ISBN 13

9780816633876

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