Six Plays

By Archibald MacLeish

How did Greek literature and cultural assumptions / world-view interact? John Gould examines ancient Greek ideas concerning myth, ritual, memory, and exchange. An overriding interest in anthropological fieldwork shapes his argument. This book contains essays written by one of the world's foremost experts in Greek mythology and culture since the 1970s, including many previously unpublished papers. Newly revised, with reference both to corroborative material and to subsequent treatments and discussion of significantly different approaches to the same topics, these essays give the whole volume a coherence of focus and argument. Most of the essays arise out of the experience of teaching and address problems, puzzles, and misunderstandings encountered by students.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395284198
• ISBN13: 9780395284193
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Amazing, timely plays

I am a theater director, and I directed two of the plays in this volume. One (Air Raid) is about civilians caught in the middle of a war. The other (This Music Crept by Me Upon the Waters) is about people trying to find meaning in their lives, but ultimately just going along with the status quo. Air Raid was written in the thirties, a reponse to Picasso's painting Guernica, wich was a reponse to the bombing of a Basque village. But it could just as easily be about Iraq. This Music was written in the fifties, about post-war Americans and Brits with plenty of disposable income. Is reads like a condemnation of 21st century society, talking about environmentalism wile driving an SUV and living in a 5000 square foot house. Great writer, great plays.