Orphic tradition and the birth of the gods / Dwayne A. Meisner.

9780190663551 (electronic book)

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

English

1 online resource : illustrations.

PA3092 .M45 2019

881.0109382

'Orphic Traditions and the Birth of the Gods' is a literary history that attempts to reconstruct the fragments of four theogonies that were attributed to the legendary singer Orpheus: the Derveni, Eudemian, Hieronyman, and Rhapsodic Theogonies. Most modern scholars have described these poems as if they were similar to Hesiod's Theogony-lengthy chronological accounts of the births of the gods from the beginning of time to the present, but this text suggests that a better model for understanding how these poems were composed is to see each of them as an individual product of bricolage (as explained by Claude Lévi-Strauss), rather than as items in the stemma of a static manuscript tradition (as reconstructed by Martin West).

'Orphic Traditions and the Birth of the Gods' is a literary history that attempts to reconstruct the fragments of four theogonies that were attributed to the legendary singer Orpheus: the Derveni, Eudemian, Hieronyman, and Rhapsodic Theogonies. Most modern scholars have described these poems as if they were similar to Hesiod's Theogony-lengthy chronological accounts of the births of the gods from the beginning of time to the present, but this text suggests that a better model for understanding how these poems were composed is to see each of them as an individual product of bricolage (as explained by Claude Lévi-Strauss), rather than as items in the stemma of a static manuscript tradition (as reconstructed by Martin West).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on January 8, 2019).

Oxford scholarship online.

Print version: 9780190663520

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