Scylla: Myth, Metaphor, Paradox

Scylla: Myth, Metaphor, Paradox

Language: English

Pages: 317

ISBN: 1107026768

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


What's in a name? Using the example of a famous monster from Greek myth, this book challenges the dominant view that a mythical symbol denotes a single, clear-cut 'figure' and proposes instead to conceptualize the name 'Scylla' as a combination of three concepts - sea, dog and woman - whose articulation changes over time. While archaic and classical Greek versions usually emphasize the metaphorical coherence of Scylla's various components, the name is increasingly treated as a well-defined but also paradoxical construct from the late fourth century BCE onward. Proceeding through detailed analyses of Greek and Roman texts and images, Professor Hopman shows how the same name can variously express anxieties about the sea, dogs, aggressive women and shy maidens, thus offering an empirical response to the semiotic puzzle raised by non-referential proper names.

The Brides of Rollrock Island

The Monarch of the Glen

Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (Bollingen VI)

Media, Myth, and Society

The Hindus: An Alternative History

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

stresses that his mother’s mind is divided (d©ca qum»v, 16.73) between the two options of remarrying or waiting, and Penelope herself acknowledges the same mental turmoil to the disguised beggar in Book 19 (âv kaª –moª d©ca qum¼v ½rÛretai ›nqa kaª ›nqa, Od. 19.524). More sinister possibilities regarding Penelope’s role are implicitly raised throughout the poem, including the possibility that she may behave like Clytemnestra and contrive her husband’s death (11.406–34) or that she may have plotted

device to explore the gods, heroes, and monsters of antiquity, the concept of “figure” is worth examining in detail, for it carries strong assumptions shaping the methodology and results of the studies that depend on it. In contemporary English or French, the word “figure” primarily refers to the form or shape of a living being, or to the representation thereof. The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following glosses: “Bodily shape, occas. including appearance and bearing. Now chiefly of

teÅxetai, d©khn as a preposition in the sense of “in the manner of” introducing Šthv laqra©ou, and teÅxetai as a form of tugc†nw. The latter is the only point on which Judet differs from Mazon and Fraenkel (who interpret teÅxetai as a form of teÅcw) and which I find well supported by his argument of a paronomasia with tÅch‚ line 1230. West 1998 follows Lawson 1932 and places line 1228 after line 1230, apparently because they think that the syntax of the transmitted text requires understanding

Scylla clearly ties these three images together. Yet their relevance to classical versions of the monster can be apprehended through indirect hints. The analogy between the mouth and female genitals is familiar to modern readers because, at least since Freud and the rise of psychoanalysis, we are used to thinking about the two main orifices of the female body as symbolic equivalents. Whether a fundamental human archetype or an inheritance of Western civilization, that link is present in Greek

fragment from Aeschylus’ Toxotides (Archeresses) emphasizes the role reversal implied by the hunter’s death, when “the dogs destroyed the man who was their master” (kÅnev dihm†qunon Šndra desp»thn, fr. 244 Radt). Actaeon’s dogs demonstrate both the possibility and the precariousness of the domestication process. Classical imagination is acutely aware of the ever-renewed necessity to tame man’s closest companion. The notion of domestication that literally applies to dogs metaphorically applies to

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