Mythe et société en Grèce ancienne

by Jean-Pierre Vernant

This book is a stimulating and largely persuasive collection of essays on the interrelations between social institutions and mythical thinking in ancient Greek society. What is fundamental to the author's approach is a determination to see the meaning of Greek myth and of Greek social institutions in patterns of association and opposition, in the articulations of a system of ideas. It is in this sense that the term "structuralist" is accurately used of him, not in the sense of one who mechanically applies Lévi-Straussian procedures and categories to the Greek evidence. [Back cover].