Athenian Myths & Institutions: Words in Action

This book provides an introduction to the critical interpretation of Athenian myths. It does not retell the various myths under consideration, but rather examines the myths from a variety of perspectives, including the traditional historical and literary-critical interpretations, as well as the more modern approaches of anthropologists, feminist critics, and in particular, the work of the French structuralists Jean-Pierre Vernant, Marcel Detienne, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.