Americans Interpret the Parthenon PDF Download

Author: Robert Kent Sutton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 242

View

Book Description

Author: Joan Breton Connelly
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385350503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 521

View

Book Description
Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.

Author: Joan Breton Connelly
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307476596
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 530

View

Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book and one of The Daily Beast's Best Books of the Year Winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award Since the Enlightenment, the Parthenon—the greatest example of Athenian architecture—has been venerated as the definitive symbol of Western democratic values. Here, Joan Breton Connelly challenges this conventional wisdom, drawing on previously undiscovered sources to present a revolutionary new view of this peerless building. Reaching back across time to trace the Parthenon’s story from the laying of its foundation, Connelly finds its true meaning not in the rationalist ideals we typically associate with Athens but in a vast web of ceaseless cultic observances and a unique mythic identity, in which democracy in our sense of the word would have been inconceivable. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, and full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma sheds a stunning new light on the ancient Athenians from whom we claim cultural descent—and on Western civilization itself.

Author: Archaeological Institute of America
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 446

View

Book Description
Beginning with v. 5, 1914, contains the annual reports of the Institute and the schools, the minutes of the Council, the directory, and announcements of an official nature; the non technical matter formerly appearing in the quarterly Bulletin has been included in Art and archaeology since 1914. Cf. Bulletin, v. 5, Editorial note.

Author: Archaeological Institute of America
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 800

View

Book Description
Beginning with v. 5, 1914, contains the annual reports of the Institute and the schools, the minutes of the Council, the directory, and announcements of an official nature; the non-technical matter formerly appearing in the quarterly Bulletin has been included in Art and archaeology since 1914. Cf. Bulletin, v. 5, Editorial note.

Author: Andrew D. Dimarogonas
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 9789057025624
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

View

Book Description
Presents 12,860 entries listing scholarly publications on Greek studies. Research and review journals, books, and monographs are indexed in the areas of classical, Hellenistic, Biblical, Byzantine, Medieval, and modern Greek studies., but no annotations are included. After the general listings, entries are also indexed by journal, text, name, geography, and subject. The CD-ROM contains an electronic version of the book. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author: Charlene M. Boyer Lewis
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813920801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

View

Book Description
Written as a dissertation in history at the U. of Virginia, this study recreates the societal mores displayed at summer resorts at Virginia Springs from 1790-1860, as this was recorded in the letters and other archives of families who sojourned there. Lewis (history, Widener U.) suggests that her history provides a new insight into plantation society by recording responses to unusual events and lack of routine. She supplements the account with some analysis of the sources for the romantic and idealistic views of this culture. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author: Michael Meckler
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN: 1932792325
Category : Civilization, Classical
Languages : en
Pages : 243

View

Book Description
history and illustrates how the ancient Greeks and Romans continue to influence political theory and determine policy in the United States, from the education of the Founders to the War in Iraq.

Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521820936
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 468

View

Book Description
Provides an overview of a classical monument interjected with the discoveries of modern scholarship.

Author: Randall M. Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313065365
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 2658

View

Book Description
The course of daily life in the United States has been a product of tradition, environment, and circumstance. How did the Civil War alter the lives of women, both white and black, left alone on southern farms? How did the Great Depression change the lives of working class families in eastern cities? How did the discovery of gold in California transform the lives of native American, Hispanic, and white communities in western territories? Organized by time period as spelled out in the National Standards for U.S. History, these four volumes effectively analyze the diverse whole of American experience, examining the domestic, economic, intellectual, material, political, recreational, and religious life of the American people between 1763 and 2005. Working under the editorial direction of general editor Randall M. Miller, professor of history at St. Joseph's University, a group of expert volume editors carefully integrate material drawn from volumes in Greenwood's highly successful Daily Life Through History series with new material researched and written by themselves and other scholars. The four volumes cover the following periods: The War of Independence and Antebellum Expansion and Reform, 1763-1861, The Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Industrialization of America, 1861-1900, The Emergence of Modern America, World War I, and the Great Depression, 1900-1940 and Wartime, Postwar, and Contemporary America, 1940-Present. Each volume includes a selection of primary documents, a timeline of important events during the period, images illustrating the text, and extensive bibliography of further information resources—both print and electronic—and a detailed subject index.