Hermes the Thief: The Evolution of a Myth - Softcover

Norman O. Brown

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394705440 ISBN 13: 9780394705446

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1969

Synopsis

Hermes -- trickster and culture hero, divine child and patron of stealthy action, master of magic words, seducer and whisperer -- is a vital and complex figure in Greek mythology. Shepherd, craftsman, herald, musician, athlete, merchant -- who is this tricky shapechanger confronting man at every truth? In this classic, prescient work (first published in 1947, and foreshadowing all subsequent work greeting the return of the gods), Brown asks, "Is Hermes the Thief the prototype, from which, by extension and analogy, the Trickster was derived? Or is the notion of trickery the fundamental one, and theft merely a specific manifestation of it?"

About this title

About the Author:

Norman Oliver Brown (1913–2002) was an American intellectual of wide ranging interests, graduating from Oxford with an MA and from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a Ph.D. in the Classics. During World War II, Brown worked for the OSS as a specialist on French culture and later became Professor of Classics at Wesleyan University. In the late 1960s, he moved on to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was named Professor of Humanities. His initial work in classics betrayed a Marxist bent (his commentary to Hesiod’s Theogony and his first monograph, Hermes the Thief). Following his disenchantment with real politics in the wake of the 1948 presidential election, Brown turned to a deep study of the works of Freud, which culminated in his classic 1959 study Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History. During his long residence at Santa Cruz, his interests broadened to include James Joyce, classical poetry and mythology, and a deep study of Islam. Many of his later writings were collected in the anthology Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1969
• ISBN 10: 0394705440
• ISBN 13: 9780394705446
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 175