> As I pointed out in my posting, they are usually referring
> to Classical or Norse mythology - I have them use those
> words instead of Pagan. Non-Christian would also do, I
> suppose. Sometimes they just mean the whole
> Classical frame of reference, in which case "Classicism" is
> the word.
Over on classics-l we have had it out over this question several times. The
solution, by no means universally adopted, is to refer to "Greco-Roman
paganism" as "Mediterranean polytheistic myth" or some such; you can come up
with your own version of same for mythologies from further north in Europe.
As for Graves, we classicists are quite aware of him. He is a goldmine of
information, esp. when it comes to obscure sources not likely to be in any but
a research library. But his works are sometimes--perhaps I should say
often--affected by his woolly theology. Most of us use Graves to check
ourselves on the original sources (e.g., did we miss anything that Graves
looked at?), but there is better and more recent interpretative scholarship on
the Greek myths. For example, Gantz's _Early Greek Myth_ (Baltimore:
Hopkins, 1993) is the place to go if you want to know, say, the earliest red
figure representation in Greece of a certain myth. He is quite good on the
lit. sources also.
Best,
MW
Mark F. Williams
Department of Classics
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, Michigan
USA 49546
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|