The Muse of History - Oswyn Murray

The Muse of History

The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
528 Seiten
2024
The Belknap Press (Verlag)
978-0-674-29745-6 (ISBN)
37,70 inkl. MwSt
Oswyn Murray charts the shifting uses of the ancient past, showing how three centuries of scholars interpreted ancient Greece in the light of contemporary political interests. Rich in stories and portraits of influential thinkers, The Muse of History is a powerful reminder that the meaning of the past is always made in and for the present.
How the modern world understood the ancient Greeks and why they matter today.

“This majestic book by Oswyn Murray has been long and eagerly awaited…and its quality and scope exceed expectations.” —Edith Hall, BBC History Magazine

The study of ancient Greece has been central to Western conceptions of history since the Renaissance. The Muse of History traces the shifting patterns of this preoccupation in the last three centuries, in which successive generations have reinterpreted the Greeks in the light of their contemporary worlds. Thus, in the eighteenth century, the conflict between Athens and Sparta became a touchstone in the development of republicanism, and in the nineteenth, Athens came to represent the democratic ideal. Amid the ideological conflicts of the twentieth century, the Greeks were imagined in an age of suffering, inspiring defenses against nationalism, Nazism, communism, and capitalism.

Oswyn Murray draws powerful conclusions from this historiography, using the ever-changing narrative of ancient Greece to illuminate grand theories of human society. Analyzing the influence of historians and philosophers including Hegel, Burckhardt, Nietzsche, and Braudel, Murray also considers how coming generations might perceive the Greeks. Along the way, The Muse of History offers rare behind-the-scenes glimpses of figures who shaped the study of ancient Greece, some devotedly cited to this day and others forgotten. We sit in on a class with Arnaldo Momigliano; meet Moses Finley after his arrival in England; eavesdrop on Paul Veyne, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet; and rediscover Michel Foucault.

A thrilling work that rewrites established scholarly traditions and locates important ideas in unexpected places, The Muse of History reminds us that the meaning of the past is always made in and for the present.

Oswyn Murray is an emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, University of Oxford, and a leading scholar of the ancient world. He has written widely translated books including Early Greece and The Symposion: Drinking Greek Style and is the coeditor of The Oxford History of the Classical World.

Erscheinungsdatum
Zusatzinfo 26 illus., 8 color illus.
Verlagsort Cambridge, Mass.
Sprache englisch
Maße 156 x 235 mm
Gewicht 973 g
Themenwelt Geschichte Allgemeine Geschichte Vor- und Frühgeschichte
Geisteswissenschaften Geschichte Regional- / Ländergeschichte
Geschichte Teilgebiete der Geschichte Kulturgeschichte
ISBN-10 0-674-29745-8 / 0674297458
ISBN-13 978-0-674-29745-6 / 9780674297456
Zustand Neuware
Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR)
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