Christopher
Interesting as it will be as a starting point
(and so far I have no choice but to go that
far back), Ancient Greece is a long way
from Medieval English churchyards. I can
see that making that particular connection
is not going to be easy.
RonH
BUS
----- Original Message -----
From: Christopher Crockett <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 1999 07:16
Subject: Yew trees
Mark Holtgrefe wrote:
>Most of what I had heard about yew trees being associated with death comes
from Graves' _White Goddess_. The problem there, unlike the _Greek Myths_,
is
tracking down his sources.....
Yes, it was apparently his White Goddess stuff which tarnished his
reputation
in scholarly quarters (except, wasn't it published later??), though the
theme
is laid out in a much more detailed (albeit somewhat
less focused) fashion in The Greek Myths.
This subject came up on some list last fall--sorry to repeat if it was here.
I once spent a bit of time going through the appropriate early-50s vols. of
l'Année Philologique--which perports to be *the* bibliography of all aspects
of Classics--looking for a review of The G.M., and couldn't find
a *single* one.
Just ignored by Orthodox Academia, apparently.
Which I find to be a quite extraordinary bit of blindness/bigotry .
I mentioned this to a good friend/former classics professor of mine
(specialist in Bronze Age Greece with several *excellent* publications to
his
credit) and asked him what his opinion of the work was and he just looked at
me rather funny and said that, though he'd had a copy of it since his Johns
Hopkins grad. days, he'd never read it. "Not considered a serious, scholarly
work," he said.
I just found that amazing.
You want to know about Yew trees in ancient Greek religion and the where the
primary sources are?
Go to Graves.
Someday, some classicist is going to "discover" that book....
Best from here,
Christopher
____________________________________________________________________
Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at
http://webmail.netscape.com.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|