Approaches to Greek Myth

There was no simple agreement on the subject of "myth" in classical antiquity, and there remains none today. In Approaches to Greek Myth, Lowell Edmunds brings together practitioners of eight of the most important contemporary approaches to the subject. Whether exploring myth from a historical, comparative, or theoretical perspective, each lucidly describes a particular approach, applies it to one or more myths, and reflects on what the approach yields that others do not. Contributors are H. S. Versnel on the intersections of myth and ritual; Carlo Brillante, on the history of Greek myth and history in Greek myth; Robert Mondi, on the near Eastern contexts, and Joseph Falaky Nagy, on the Indo-European structure in Greek myth; William F. Hansen on myth and folklore; Claude Calame, on the Greimasian approach; Richard Caldwell, on psychoanalytic interpretations; and Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, on the iconography of vase paintings of Theseus and Medea—and on a methodology for "reading" such visual sources. In his introduction, Edmunds confronts Marcel Detienne's recent deconstruction of the notion of Greek mythology and reconstructs a meaning for myth among the ancient Greeks.