Book of the Sphinx (Texts and Contexts) - Hardcover

Regier, Willis Goth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803239564 ISBN 13: 9780803239562

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2004

Synopsis

Sought, the Sphinx seems everywhere, whether the guardian of the pyramids on Egypt's Giza plateau or the beautiful man-eater with a deadly riddle, to be approached with awful caution. The Sphinx, that icon painted, sculpted, engraved, and exalted in poetry, fiction, and music, so impressed the philosopher Hegel that he pronounced the creature “the symbol of the symbolic itself.” With a wealth of illustrations, Book of the Sphinx confirms Hegel's lofty judgment, finding the Sphinx everywhere: in tragedies, paintings, opera, murder mysteries, brothels, bars, and advertisements.

 

Pursuing the Sphinx through kaleidoscopic sightings and encyclopedic observations, Willis Goth Regier plumbs the symbol's mysteries, conducting the reader down ever more perplexing and intriguing paths. Wonderfully readable, his highly idiosyncratic tour of the ages and the arts leads at last to a conception of the Sphinx that embraces nothing less than all that is unknowable—proving once again that confronting a Sphinx is one of the most dangerous and exhilarating adventures of the imagination.

About this title

About the Author

Willis Goth Regier has pursued Sphinxes at the University of Nebraska, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard University. He now seeks Sphinxes at the University of Illinois.

From the Inside Flap

"Book of the Sphinx is a delight. Willis Regier is not only very learned but also creative in making fiction, even poetry, out of the myth of the Sphinx and the histories of that myth. His own retellings are artful and compelling."--Gregory Nagy, author of Plato's Rhapsody and Homer's Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens.

"A very accomplished, well-written book. Book of the Sphinx is immensely erudite, with a wealth of references from all historical periods, from ancient Egypt to modern times, and from the most diverse realms." Jonathan Culler, the author of Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature.

Sought, the Sphinx seems everywhere, whether the guardian of the pyramids on Egypt's Giza plateau or the beautiful man-eater with a deadly riddle, to be approached with awful caution. The Sphinx, that icon painted, sculpted, engraved, and exalted in poetry, fiction, and music, so impressed the philosopher Hegel that he pronounced the creature "the symbol of the symbolic itself." With a wealth of illustrations, Book of the Sphinx confirms Hegel's lofty judgment, finding the Sphinx everywhere: in tragedies, paintings, opera, murder mysteries, brothels, bars, and advertisements.

Pursuing the Sphinx through kaleidoscopic sightings and encyclopedic observations, Willis Goth Regier plumbs the symbol's mysteries, conducting the reader down ever more perplexing and intriguing paths. Wonderfully readable, his highly idiosyncratic tour of the ages and the arts leads at last to a conception of the Sphinx that embraces nothing less than all that is unknowable--proving once again that confronting a Sphinx is one of the most dangerous and exhilarating adventures of the imagination.

Willis Goth Regier has pursued Sphinxes at the University of Nebraska, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard University. He now seeks Sphinxes at the University of Illinois

Reviews

From ancient art to contemporary popular music, Regier ranges widely in exploring the meaning of the enigmatic image of the sphinx. Although occasionally too floridly written, this is nonetheless a compelling book about an engaging subject. Beginning with the most famous sphinx, the one that stands before the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Regier traces the career of the half-human, half-monster hybrid through dreams, literature, and visual art. Always he finds paradox to be the essence of the creature; it is seductive and destructive, alluring and repellent, elusive and confrontive. Many illustrations, ranging from the familiar (Ingres, Gerome, Marvel Comics) to the obscure (political cartoons, stereoscopes, old postcards) enhance the value of the book as a reference for those intrigued by art's most monstrous charmer. Patricia Monaghan
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803239564
• ISBN 13: 9780803239562
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 301