读过 Helen of Troy 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
Informative and interesting，从考古和史料的角度寻找这个也许根本没有存在过的特洛伊的海伦，探寻她所处时代和地域的环境、生活习惯、社会习俗、思维模式，将传说中的海伦还原成一个立体、多面、真实存在的生活在青铜器时期的女性，实际上信息组织稍微有点scattered，资料虽然多且角度全但多少有些碎片式，不过作者笔力相当深厚，重述特洛伊战争的部分写得考究且激动人心，也充满了趣味性，她自己阅读的有声书非常engaging，最喜欢的部分是讨论海伦是和帕里斯私奔还是被掳走的部分，认为“被掳走”是基督教语境下强加的rape fantasy这个推论很有说服力，而Bettany Hughes的研究也为这个可能是历史上被物化、污名化最严重的女性赋予了一些主体性。
Helen of Troy [Book] Douban
author:
Bettany Hughes
publishing house:
Knopf
2005
- 10
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.
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.