| Description |
1 online resource (xv, 286 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color), maps |
| Contents |
Introduction : rewriting the story of western civilization -- Minoan artifacts challenge the inevitability of patriarchy -- The mystery of Minoan civilization -- An expectation of rebirth or immortality -- Time as a circle rather than a line -- The troubling question of war -- Crete and the issue of female sexuality -- The ecstatic and the divine as inseperable -- Five values dramatically at odds with patriarchy -- The collapse of the Minoan world -- The invasions of 1600 BCE : a war culture emerges -- The Theran explosion : the loss of faith in Mother Earth -- The growth of trade : the diminishment of daughters -- The great civil war over marriage : the end of women-centered culture in the eastern Mediterranean -- A warrior civilization emerges -- Four hundred years of chaos sets the stage -- Values shaped by storytellers -- An exaggerated feminine is made monstrous -- Mother Earth is overthrown -- Jason resists the many shapes of seductive women -- Odysseus rejects Calypso -- Homer poses the choice between love and property -- Clytemnestra is sacrificed on the altar of marriage -- Marriage destroys the mother-daughter bond -- Daughters die for civic good -- A multitude of myths to tame, punish, and disparage women -- Oedipus, the lost son -- A glorious monument enshrining the subordination of women -- Biblical patriarchs match the Greek story -- Objections to the warrior civilization -- Jesus carries forward the Eleusian symbolism of grain and wine -- Jesus takes on the threat of military destruction -- Ancient beliefs spring up among the Celts -- A short-lived Islamic challenge -- The metaphor of the holy grail -- Devil talk and witch burnings -- Closing the book on the patriarchy -- History as a choice of stories -- Women coming home to dignity -- The declining utility of war -- Another story all along |
| Summary |
Here, for the first time, threads of truth explaining the mysterious disappearance of ancient cultures-in which women and the environment were at the center-have been woven together to illustrate this loss which has dramatically influenced 3,500 years of western history. The ancient world had not only treated women with respect but had been more resistant to war, more attentive to earth's cycles, more ecstatic. Then suddenly the whole culture vanished. The loss was ushered in by volcanoes and poets, gods of death and caricatures of maddening women, Scylla, Charybdis, Medea, and Calypso-all of |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-270) and index |
| Notes |
English |
|
Print version record |
| Subject |
Sex role -- History
|
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Patriarchy -- History
|
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Minoans.
|
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Mythology, Greek.
|
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Minoans.
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Mythology, Greek.
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Patriarchy.
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Sex role.
|
| Genre/Form |
History.
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| LC no. |
2005032942 |
| ISBN |
9781555918460 |
|
1555918468 |
|
1282467638 |
|
9781282467637 |
|
9786612467639 |
|
6612467630 |
|
