Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness

by Ruth Padel

Book Overview

Madness is central to Western tragedy in all epochs, but we find the origins of this centrality in early Greece: in Homeric insight into the "damage a damaged mind can do." Greece, and especially tragedy, gave the West its permanent perception of madness as violent and damaging. Drawing on her deep knowledge of anthropology, psychoanalysis, Shakespeare, and the history of madness, as well as of Greek language and literature, Ruth Padel probes the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691033609
• ISBN13: 9780691033600
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 294 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"