The Sin of Knowledge Ancient Themes and Modern Variations
Language: English
Published by Princeton University Press, 2000
- Hardcover
- New

Seller: PBShop.store UK, Fairford, GLOS, United KingdomPBShop.store UK
AbeBooks seller since June 11, 1999
Condition: New
US$ 135.27
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New Book. Delivered from our UK warehouse in 4 to 14 business days. THIS BOOK IS PRINTED ON DEMAND. Established seller since 2000.
Seller Inventory # L1-9780691050652
- Title
- The Sin of Knowledge Ancient Themes and Modern Variations
- Author
- Theodore Ziolkowski
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Publication year
- 2000
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- HRD
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0691050651
- ISBN 13
- 9780691050652
- Item weight
- 586 grams
Adam, Prometheus, and Faust--their stories were central to the formation of Western consciousness and continue to be timely cautionary tales in an age driven by information and technology. Here Theodore Ziolkowski explores how each myth represents a response on the part of ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, and sixteenth-century Christian culture to the problem of knowledge, particularly humankind's powerful, perennial, and sometimes unethical desire for it. This book exposes for the first time the similarities underlying these myths as well as their origins in earlier trickster legends, and considers when and why they emerged in their respective societies. It then examines the variations through which the themes have been adapted by modern writers to express their own awareness of the sin of knowledge.
Each myth is shown to capture the anxiety of a society when faced with new knowledge that challenges traditional values. Ziolkowski's examples of recent appropriations of the myths are especially provocative. From Voltaire to the present, the Fall of Adam has provided an image for the emergence from childhood innocence into the consciousness of maturity. Prometheus, as the challenger of authority and the initiator of technological evil, yielded an ambivalent model for the socialist imagination of the German Democratic Republic. And finally, an America unsettled by its responsibility for the atomic bomb, and worrying that in its postwar prosperity it had betrayed its values, recognized in Faust the disturbing image of its soul.
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PBShop.store UK
Fairford, GLOS, United Kingdom
AbeBooks seller since June 11, 1999
Shipping rates from United Kingdom to U.S.A.
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