RT Book
T1 Euhemerism and its uses: the mortal gods
T2 Routledge studies in Renaissance and early modern worlds of knowledge
A2 Pugh, Syrithe
LA English
PP London
PB Routledge
YR 2023
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1823565875
AB Euhemerism and Its Uses offers the first interdisciplinary, focussed, and all-round view of the long history of an important but understudied phenomenon in European intellectual and cultural history. Euhemerism - the claim that the Greek gods were historically mortal men and women - originated in the early third century BCE, in an enigmatic and now fragmentary text by the otherwise unknown author Euhemeros. This work, the Sacred Inscription, has been read variously as a theory of religion, an atheist's manifesto, as justifying or satirizing ruler-worship, as a fantasy travel-narrative, and as an early 'utopia'. Influencing Hellenistic and Roman literature and religious and political thought, and appropriated by early Christians to debunk polytheism while simultaneously justifying the continued study of classical literature, euhemerism was widespread in the middle ages and Renaissance, and its reverberations continue to be felt in modern myth-theory. Yet, though frequently invoked as a powerful and pervasive tradition across several disciplines, it is still under-examined and poorly understood. Filling an important gap in the history of ideas, this volume will appeal to scholars and students of classical reception, mediaeval and Renaissance literature, historiography, and theories of myth and religion
SN 9780367557010
K1 1500 bis heute
K1 Euhemerism
K1 Mythology
K1 Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700
K1 HISTORY / General
K1 LIT024000
K1 Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800
K1 Literaturwissenschaft, allgemein
K1 REL114000
K1 Social & Cultural History
K1 Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte