Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past
History is a love story: a tale of desire and jealousy, abandonment and fidelity, abduction and theft, rupture and reconciliation. This contention is central to Grafting Helen, Matthew Gumpert's original and dazzling meditation on Helen of Troy as a crucial anchor for much of Western thought and literature.
Grafting Helen looks at "classicism"—the privileged rhetorical language for describing cultural origins in the West—as a protracted form of cultural embezzlement. No coin in the realm has been more valuable, more circulated, more coveted, or more counterfeited than the one that bears the face of Helen of Troy. Gumpert uncovers Helen as the emblem for the past as something to be stolen, appropriated, imitated, extorted,  and coveted once again.
Tracing the figure of Helen from its classical origins through the Middle Ages, the French Renaissance, and the modern era, Gumpert suggests that the relation of current Western culture to the past is not like the act of coveting; it is the act of coveting, he argues, for it relies on the same strategies, the same defenses, the same denials, and the same delusions.
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Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past
History is a love story: a tale of desire and jealousy, abandonment and fidelity, abduction and theft, rupture and reconciliation. This contention is central to Grafting Helen, Matthew Gumpert's original and dazzling meditation on Helen of Troy as a crucial anchor for much of Western thought and literature.
Grafting Helen looks at "classicism"—the privileged rhetorical language for describing cultural origins in the West—as a protracted form of cultural embezzlement. No coin in the realm has been more valuable, more circulated, more coveted, or more counterfeited than the one that bears the face of Helen of Troy. Gumpert uncovers Helen as the emblem for the past as something to be stolen, appropriated, imitated, extorted,  and coveted once again.
Tracing the figure of Helen from its classical origins through the Middle Ages, the French Renaissance, and the modern era, Gumpert suggests that the relation of current Western culture to the past is not like the act of coveting; it is the act of coveting, he argues, for it relies on the same strategies, the same defenses, the same denials, and the same delusions.
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Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past

Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past

by Matthew Gumpert
Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past

Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past

by Matthew Gumpert

Hardcover(1)

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Overview

History is a love story: a tale of desire and jealousy, abandonment and fidelity, abduction and theft, rupture and reconciliation. This contention is central to Grafting Helen, Matthew Gumpert's original and dazzling meditation on Helen of Troy as a crucial anchor for much of Western thought and literature.
Grafting Helen looks at "classicism"—the privileged rhetorical language for describing cultural origins in the West—as a protracted form of cultural embezzlement. No coin in the realm has been more valuable, more circulated, more coveted, or more counterfeited than the one that bears the face of Helen of Troy. Gumpert uncovers Helen as the emblem for the past as something to be stolen, appropriated, imitated, extorted,  and coveted once again.
Tracing the figure of Helen from its classical origins through the Middle Ages, the French Renaissance, and the modern era, Gumpert suggests that the relation of current Western culture to the past is not like the act of coveting; it is the act of coveting, he argues, for it relies on the same strategies, the same defenses, the same denials, and the same delusions.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780299171209
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date: 11/19/2001
Series: Studies in Classics
Edition description: 1
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Matthew Gumpert is assistant professor of core curriculum at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He has taught comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Harvard University. His published work includes the English translation of Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre, and Scholarship on Sistera’s Death by Mieke Bal.

Table of Contents

Prefacexi
Part 1Helen in Greece
1.Mimesis3
2.Anamnesis24
3.Supplement43
4.Speculation58
5.Epideixis69
6.Deixis84
Part 2Helen in France
7.Idolatry101
8.Translation123
9.Genealogy143
10.Cosmetics162
11.Miscegenation193
12.Prostitution218
Prosthesis: Helen in (Modern) Greece239
Conclusion251
Notes265
Bibliography300
Acknowledgments320
Index322
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