Helen of Troy : goddess, princess, whore / Bettany Hughes.
Hughes, Bettany.
2005
BL820.H45 H84 2005 (Mapit)
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Title Helen of Troy : goddess, princess, whore / Bettany Hughes.
Author Hughes, Bettany.
Edition 1st American ed.
ISBN 1400041783
9781400041787
Imprint New York : Knopf, 2005.
Language English
Description xxxvii, 458 p., [32] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), maps ; 25 cm.
Call Number BL820.H45 H84 2005
Dewey Decimal Classification 398/.352
Summary For close to three thousand years, Helen of Troy has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty and a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield. Because of her double marriage to the Greek king Menelaus and the Trojan prince Paris, Helen was held responsible for an enduring enmity between East and West. But who was she? Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Age of Heroes; the focus of a cult that conflated Helen the heroine with a pre-Greek fertility goddess; the home-wrecker of the Iliad; the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists. Focusing on a flesh-and-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age, cultural and social historian Hughes reconstructs the context of her life. Through the eyes of a young Mycenaean princess, Hughes examines the physical, historical, and cultural traces that Helen has left on locations in Greece, North Africa, and Asia Minor.--From publisher description.
Note Originally published: London : Jonathan Cape, 2005.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-443) and index.
Linked Resources Table of contents only
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
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Introduction
Cherchez la femme
An evil destiny
Helen-hunting
Goddess, princess, whore
pt. 1. Helen's birth in pre-history
1. A dangerous landscape
2. A rape, a birth
3. The lost citadel
4. The Mycenaeans
5. The pre-historic princess
pt. 2. The land of beautiful women
6. The rape of 'fair Hellen'
7. Sparte kalligynaika
8. Tender-eyed girls
pt. 3. The world's desire
9. A trophy for heroes
10. The kingmaker
11. A royal wedding
pt. 4. Kourotrophos
12. Hermione
13. A welcome burden
14. Helen, high priestess
15. La belle H́elène
pt. 5. A lover's game
16. The golden apple
17. Bearing gifts
18. Alexander Helenam Rapuit
19. The female of the species is more deadly than the male
pt. 6. Eros and Eris
20. Helen the whore
21. The pain of Aphrodite
22. The sea's foaming lanes
pt. 7. Troy beckons
23. East is east and west is west
24. The fair Troad
25. The topless towers of Ilium
26. The golden houses of the east
27. A fleet sets sail
pt. 8. Troy besieged
28. Helen, destroyer of cities
29.Death's dark cloud
30. A beautiful death, Kalos Thanatos
31. The fall of Troy
pt. 9. Immortal Helen
32. Home to Sparta
33. The death of a queen
34. The age of heroes ends
35. 'Fragrant treasuries'
36. The daughter of the ocean
pt. 10. The face that launched a thousand ships
37. Helen in Athens
38. Helen lost and Helen found
39. Helen, Homer and the chances of survival
40. Veyn fables
41. Helen of Troy and the bad Samaritan
42. 'Perpulchra,' more than beautiful
43. Dancing with the devil
44. Helen's nemesis
Appendices
1. The Minotaur's island
2. La Parisienne
3. Women of stone and clay and bronze
4. Elemental Helen, she-gods and she-devils
5. Royal purple, the colour of congealed blood
Epilogue. Myth, history and historia.

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