Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?: An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination

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University of Chicago Press, Jun 15, 1988 - History - 161 pages
"[Veyne's] present book has some kinship with his sprightly theoretical work Comment on ecrit l'histoire; and he declares that its aim was to provoke reflection on the way our conception of truth is built up and changes over the centuries. . . . The style is brilliant and exhilarating."—Jasper Griffin, Times Literary Supplement
 

Contents

Introduction
1
When Historical Truth Was Tradition and Vulgate
5
The Plurality and Analogy of True Worlds
17
The Social Distribution of Knowledge and the Modalities of Belief
27
Social Diversity of Beliefs and Mental Balkanization
41
Behind This Sociology an Implicit Program of Truth
59
Restoring Etiological Truth to Myth
71
Myth and Rhetorical Truth
79
Pausanias Entrapped
95
Forgers Truth Philologists Truth
103
The Need to Choose between Culture and Belief in a Truth
117
Notes
131
Index
155
Copyright

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About the author (1988)

Paul Veyne is a French archaeologist and historian and an honorary professor at the Collège de France. He is the author of several books in French as well as Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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