Athenian Myths and Institutions

This book provides an introduction to the critical interpretation of Athenian myths. It does not retell the various myths under consideration, but rather examines the myths from a variety of perspectives, including the traditional historical and literary-critical interpretations, as well as the more modern approaches of anthropologists, feminist critics, and in particular, the work of the French structuralists Jean-Pierre Vernant, Marcel Detienne, and PierreVidal-Naquet.