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Stealing Helen - The Myth of the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective (Paperback)
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Stealing Helen - The Myth of the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective (Paperback)
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It's a familiar story: a beautiful woman is abducted and her
husband journeys to recover her. This story's best-known
incarnation is also a central Greek myth-the abduction of Helen
that led to the Trojan War. Stealing Helen surveys a vast range of
folktales and texts exhibiting the story pattern of the abducted
beautiful wife and makes a detailed comparison with the Helen of
Troy myth. Lowell Edmunds shows that certain Sanskrit, Welsh, and
Old Irish texts suggest there was an Indo-European story of the
abducted wife before the Helen myth of the Iliad became known.
Investigating Helen's status in ancient Greek sources, Edmunds
argues that if Helen was just one trope of the abducted wife, the
quest for Helen's origin in Spartan cult can be abandoned, as can
the quest for an Indo-European goddess who grew into the Helen
myth. He explains that Helen was not a divine essence but a
narrative figure that could replicate itself as needed, at various
times or places in ancient Greece. Edmunds recovers some of these
narrative Helens, such as those of the Pythagoreans and of Simon
Magus, which then inspired the Helens of the Faust legend and
Goethe. Stealing Helen offers a detailed critique of prevailing
views behind the "real" Helen and presents an eye-opening
exploration of the many sources for this international mythical and
literary icon.
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