Greek Mythology

This revised translation of Fritz Graf's highly acclaimed introduction to Greek mythology offers a chronological account of the principal Greek myths that appear in the surviving literary and artistic sources and concurrently documents the history of interpretation of Greek mythology from the 17th century to the present. First surveying the various definitions of myth that have been advanced, Graf proceeds to examine topics such as the relationship between Greek myths and epic poetry, the connection between particular myths and shrines or holy festivals, the use of myth in Greek song and tragedy, and the uses and interpretations of myth by philosophers and allegorists.

Fritz Graf is professor of philology in the Seminar for Classical Philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Thomas Marier is in the Department of Classics at the Johns Hopkins University.

Translator's Note
Preface to the English-Language Edition
Introduction: A Provisional Definition	p. 1
The Rise of the Scientific Study of Myth	p. 9
The Beginnings of Modern Mythology	p. 9
The Eighteenth-Century Forerunners of Heyne and Herder	p. 13
The Romantics	p. 19
The Science of Myth in the Nineteenth Century	p. 22
The New Romantics	p. 31
Mythology from Fontenelle to Frazer	p. 32
New Approaches to the Interpretation of Myth in the Twentieth Century	p. 35
Myth and Psychoanalysis	p. 36
Myth and Society: From Myth-and-Ritual Theory to Functionalism	p. 39
The Structures of Myth and of Mythical Narrative	p. 43
The Myth-and-Ritual Theory Revised	p. 50
The Semiotic Approach	p. 53
Myth and Epic Poetry	p. 57
Myth and Homer	p. 57
The Origins of Greek Myth	p. 68
The Origin of the World and the Gods	p. 80
Hesiod's Theogony	p. 80
The Eastern Background	p. 86
Theogony and Cosmogony after Hesiod	p. 96
Myth, Sanctuary, and Festival	p. 101
Delian Etiologies	p. 102
Understanding Mythical Etiology	p. 110
Myth, Sanctuary and Festival	p. 118
Myth as History	p. 121
Myth and Historiography	p. 121
Genealogies	p. 125
Mythical Constructions of History	p. 131
Theseus and Athens	p. 136
Myth as History	p. 140
Myth, Choral Song, and Tragedy	p. 142
Athenian Tragedy	p. 142
Tragedy and Choral Poetry	p. 145
The Oresteia	p. 157
Euripides, Myth, and the Gods	p. 168
Philosophers, Allegorists, and Mythologists	p. 176
Myth after the Fifth Century B.C.	p. 176
Philosophical Mythologia and Mythopoeia 1: The Sophists	p. 178
Philosophical Mythologia and Mythopoeia 2: Plato	p. 183
Euhemerus	p. 191
Mythographers	p. 193
Allegorists	p. 194
Abbreviations and Sources	p. 199
Notes	p. 203
Suggestions for Further Reading	p. 223
Index	p. 231
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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