| Edition |
1st American ed. |
| Description |
xxxvii, 458 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm |
| Note |
Originally published: London : Jonathan Cape, 2005. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 347-443) and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction -- Cherchez la femme -- An evil destiny -- Helen-hunting -- Goddess, princess, whore -- pt. 1. Helen's birth in pre-history -- 1. A dangerous landscape -- 2. A rape, a birth -- 3. The lost citadel -- 4. The Mycenaeans -- 5. The pre-historic princess -- pt. 2. The land of beautiful women -- 6. The rape of 'fair Hellen' -- 7. Sparte kalligynaika -- 8. Tender-eyed girls -- pt. 3. The world's desire -- 9. A trophy for heroes -- 10. The kingmaker -- 11. A royal wedding -- pt. 4. Kourotrophos -- 12. Hermione -- 13. A welcome burden -- 14. Helen, high priestess -- 15. La belle H́elène -- pt. 5. A lover's game -- 16. The golden apple -- 17. Bearing gifts -- 18. Alexander Helenam Rapuit -- 19. The female of the species is more deadly than the male -- pt. 6. Eros and Eris -- 20. Helen the whore -- 21. The pain of Aphrodite -- 22. The sea's foaming lanes -- pt. 7. Troy beckons -- 23. East is east and west is west -- 24. The fair Troad -- 25. The topless towers of Ilium -- 26. The golden houses of the east -- 27. A fleet sets sail -- pt. 8. Troy besieged -- 28. Helen, destroyer of cities -- 29.Death's dark cloud -- 30. A beautiful death, Kalos Thanatos -- 31. The fall of Troy -- pt. 9. Immortal Helen -- 32. Home to Sparta -- 33. The death of a queen -- 34. The age of heroes ends -- 35. 'Fragrant treasuries' -- 36. The daughter of the ocean -- pt. 10. The face that launched a thousand ships -- 37. Helen in Athens -- 38. Helen lost and Helen found -- 39. Helen, Homer and the chances of survival -- 40. Veyn fables -- 41. Helen of Troy and the bad Samaritan -- 42. 'Perpulchra,' more than beautiful -- 43. Dancing with the devil -- 44. Helen's nemesis -- Appendices -- 1. The Minotaur's island -- 2. La Parisienne -- 3. Women of stone and clay and bronze -- 4. Elemental Helen, she-gods and she-devils -- 5. Royal purple, the colour of congealed blood -- Epilogue. Myth, history and historia. |
| Summary |
For close to three thousand years, Helen of Troy 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. But who was she? Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Age of Heroes; 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 a flesh-and-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age, cultural and social historian Hughes reconstructs the context of her life. Through the eyes of a young Mycenaean princess, Hughes examines the physical, historical, and cultural traces that Helen has left on locations in Greece, North Africa, and Asia Minor.--From publisher description. |
| Subject |
Helen, of Troy, Queen of Sparta.
|
|
Helen, of Troy, Queen of Sparta. |
| ISBN |
1400041783 |
|
9781400041787 |
| Standard No. |
9781400041787 53000 |
|
