An illuminating, erudite, lively search for the real Helen of Troy–a chronicle that combines historical inquiry and storytelling élan–from one of Britain’s most widely acclaimed and popular historians.
As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for close to three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beau...
An illuminating, erudite, lively search for the real Helen of Troy–a chronicle that combines historical inquiry and storytelling élan–from one of Britain’s most widely acclaimed and popular historians.
As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for close to three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty and a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield. Because of her double marriage to the Greek king Menelaus and the Trojan prince Paris, Helen was held responsible for an enduring enmity between East and West. For millennia she has been viewed as an exquisite agent of extermination. But who was she?
Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Age of Heroes who ruled over one of the most fertile areas of the Mycenaean world; Helen of Sparta, the focus of a cult that conflated Helen the heroine with a pre-Greek fertility goddess; the home-wrecker of the Iliad; the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists.
Focusing on the “real” Helen–a flesh-and-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age–Bettany Hughes reconstructs the context of life for this pre-historic princess. Through the eyes of a young Mycenaean woman, Hughes examines the physical, historical, and cultural traces that Helen has left on locations in Greece, North Africa, and Asia Minor. Vivid and compelling, this remarkable book brilliantly unpacks the facts and myths surrounding one of the most enigmatic and notorious figures of all time.
轻云蔽月，流风回雪，不仅适用于描述海伦(Helen)，用来评价这本书也十分契合。然而本书并不是诗集、散文或者古言读物，它也不包括任何一处或虚浮或令人尴尬的煽情和多余情怀。先来看一段对希罗多德(Herodotus)的描述性的评价，从中不难嗅到为本书定性的气味。 Although Herodot...
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0 有用 dawn 2024-04-22 17:15:47 北京
只是对了一下译文可疑的地方。
0 有用 كاثرين 2020-08-12 06:45:44
海伦，在中国文化里想不出一个对应的女人，最接近的是烽火戏诸侯的褒姒吧，但海伦不仅倾国，还倾了整个青铜文明，此后人类进入几百年的黑暗时代，直到Archaic Greece荷马的出现把关于她的口述史诗重新用文字记述。翔实的考古和文化资料重构出瑰丽的青铜文明风情画。无论她真实存在与否，Hughes从考古、历史、三千年来的文学作品对她的想象梳理出她在（男）人们集体想象中的变化。是独立富有的斯巴达女王（作者... 海伦，在中国文化里想不出一个对应的女人，最接近的是烽火戏诸侯的褒姒吧，但海伦不仅倾国，还倾了整个青铜文明，此后人类进入几百年的黑暗时代，直到Archaic Greece荷马的出现把关于她的口述史诗重新用文字记述。翔实的考古和文化资料重构出瑰丽的青铜文明风情画。无论她真实存在与否，Hughes从考古、历史、三千年来的文学作品对她的想象梳理出她在（男）人们集体想象中的变化。是独立富有的斯巴达女王（作者不指出我都没细究，Menelaus是跟她结婚才成为斯巴达王的，青铜文明可能混杂母系继承），是被神利用了的可怜女人，是毫无廉耻的婊子……终究是男人内心欲望的投射。到底是多么令人颤抖的美能令她的名字和形象穿越三千年时空，是连被围困日久的特洛伊人瞥一眼城墙上的她，都不禁说这场战争，为她付出生命是值得的。 (展开)