When Jean-Pierre Vernant first published Myth and Thought among the Greeks in 1965, it transformed the field of ancient Greek scholarship, calling forth a new way to think about Greek myth and thought.
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 ecstasies.
Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are leaders in a contemporary French classical scholarship that has produced a stunning reconfiguration of Greek thought and literature. Here they provide a disturbing and decidedly nonclassical reading of Greek myth and tragedy and the relationship between them.
Jean-Pierre Vernant is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Study of Ancient Religions at the College de France in Paris. Pierre Vidal-Naquet is Director of Studies and Professor of Sociology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.
