Pandora's Jar Women in the Greek Myths

'Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to!' - Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's TaleThe Greek myths are among the world's most important cultural building blocks and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories.Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from the Trojan War to Jason and the Argonauts. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost three thousand years ago. But modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men, and have routinely shown little interest in telling women's stories. And when they do, those women are often painted as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil. But Pandora - the first woman, who according to legend unloosed chaos upon the world - was not a villain, and even Medea and Phaedra have more nuanced stories than generations of retellings might indicate. Now, in Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, Natalie Haynes - broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist - redresses this imbalance. Taking Pandora and her jar (the box came later) as the starting point, she puts the women of the Greek myths on equal footing with the menfolk. After millennia of stories telling of gods and men, be they Zeus or Agamemnon, Paris or Odysseus, Oedipus or Jason, the voices that sing from these pages are those of Hera, Athena and Artemis, and of Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Eurydice and Penelope.'A treasure box of classical delights. Never has ancient misogyny been presented with so much wit and style' - historian Amanda Foreman Our Booksellers Say... "Accessible, witty and insightful. Haynes wonderfully explores women central to many Greek myths and what historical interpretations of these figures can tell us about contemporary ideas about womanhood. I bet you can't find another classics book that references Buffy to such excellent effect!" Becky C, Bookseller (Broad Street) View all of Becky's recommendations

ISBN:	9781509873142
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan
Imprint:	Picador
Published date:	13 May 2021
DEWEY:	292.13082
DEWEY edition:	23
Language:	English
Sales rank:	5006
Number of pages:	307
Weight:	250g
Height:	130mm
Width:	196mm
Spine width:	24mm

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