Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore
Author(s): Bettany Hughes
"As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for nearly three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty and a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield. Because of her double marriage to the Greek King Menelaus and the Trojan Prince Paris, Helen was held responsible for both the Trojan War and enduring enmity between East and West. For millennia she has been viewed as an exquisite agent of extermination. But who was she? Helen exists in many guises- a matriarch from the Age of Heroes who ruled over one of the most fertile areas of the Mycenaean world; Helen of Sparta, the focus of a cult which conflated Helen the heroine with a pre-Greek fertility goddess; the home-wrecker of the Iliad; the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists. Focusing on the 'real' Helen - a flesh-and-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age - acclaimed historian Bettany Hughes reconstructs the context of life for this elusive pre-historic princess and places her alongside the heroes and heroines of myth and history. Through the eyes of a young Mycenaean woman, Hughes examines the physical, historical and cultu
Product Information
A major new book about the life and legend of the world's 'most beautiful woman' - by the new star of TV history 20041129
" The book triumphantly reclaims Helen from some of her traducers. Hughes's portrait is as close to a real, living Helen as we are likely to get." - "Financial Times" " When Helen launched her " thousand ships, " was she a " shameless hussy?" Or, like her mother, was she a rape victim? . . . The answers have always depended on who you speak to and when. Hughes has them all." - "The Times" " Hughes skillfully brings this period back to life. A fascinating window onto the power politics of an age . . . a genuinely exciting historical narrative." - "Sunday Telegraph."
Bettany Hughes won a scholarship to read Ancient and Modern History at Oxford. Her postgraduate research into large-scale public ritual took her travelling across Asia Minor, the Balkans and Central Europe. She has been widely acknowledged as the best of the new generation of TV historians. Her first television series, Breaking the Seal, was produced for BBC 2 and the Open University and she has written and presented The Spartans, Seven Ages of Britain, The Minoans and Helen of Troy for Channel 4. She has two children and lives in London.
General Fields
- :
- : pimlico
- : pimlico
- : 0.454
- : 01 October 2006
- : 199mm X 132mm X 33mm
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 January 2015
- : books
Special Fields
- : Bettany Hughes
- : Paperback
- : New edition
- : English
- : 398/.352
- : good
- : 496
- : 16 pp b/w plates, 8 pp colour plates, app 20 integrated b/w illustrations