In search of the lost feminine : decoding the myths that radically reshaped civilization / / Craig S. Barnes.

• Author: ProQuest (Firm); Barnes, Craig S.
• TeilnehmendeR: ProQuest (Firm)
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Language: English
• Physical Description: xv, 286 p., [8] p. of plates :; ill. (some col.), maps.

Table of Contents

• Introduction : rewriting the story of western civilization
• Minoan artifacts challenge the inevitability of patriarchy
• The mystery of Minoan civilization
• An expectation of rebirth or immortality
• Time as a circle rather than a line
• The troubling question of war
• Crete and the issue of female sexuality
• The ecstatic and the divine as inseperable
• Five values dramatically at odds with patriarchy
• The collapse of the Minoan world
• The invasions of 1600 BCE : a war culture emerges
• The Theran explosion : the loss of faith in Mother Earth
• The growth of trade : the diminishment of daughters
• The great civil war over marriage : the end of women-centered culture in the eastern Mediterranean
• A warrior civilization emerges
• Four hundred years of chaos sets the stage
• Values shaped by storytellers
• An exaggerated feminine is made monstrous
• Mother Earth is overthrown
• Jason resists the many shapes of seductive women
• Odysseus rejects Calypso
• Homer poses the choice between love and property
• Clytemnestra is sacrificed on the altar of marriage
• Marriage destroys the mother-daughter bond
• Daughters die for civic good
• A multitude of myths to tame, punish, and disparage women
• Oedipus, the lost son
• A glorious monument enshrining the subordination of women
• Biblical patriarchs match the Greek story
• Objections to the warrior civilization
• Jesus carries forward the Eleusian symbolism of grain and wine
• Jesus takes on the threat of military destruction
• Ancient beliefs spring up among the Celts
• A short-lived Islamic challenge
• The metaphor of the holy grail
• Devil talk and witch burnings
• Closing the book on the patriarchy
• History as a choice of stories
• Women coming home to dignity
• The declining utility of war
• Another story all along.