Transforming Texts: Classical Images in New Contexts

This collection of four essays is the result of a humanities symposium presented at Bucknell University in 1987. Sponsored in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the collected papers encompass science and the visual arts as well as literature, history, philosophy, and religion. The transformed texts provide a continuity with the past and a revitalization of Western civilization for the future. Because of their durability and sustaining transformative efficacy, the classic texts continue to be of interest and concern in the late twentieth century.
The contributors to this volume expand the world we inhabit through their pursuit of elementary or universal truth. They have presented contemplative, insightful overtones of the past in the hopes of increasing awareness of the infinite possibilities of the present. All four papers are rooted in ancient texts whether they be in the Homeric poetry of Ulysses (John Wheatcroft), the Greek myth of Orpheus (Varujan Boghosian), Old Testament archetypes (Robert Jewett and John Lawrence), or the Mayan astronomers of pre-Columbian Mexico (Anthony Aveni).

Anthony Aveni is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Astronomy and Anthropology at Colgate University.