Description
In the spring of 1900, British archaeologist Arthur Evans began to excavate the palace of Knossos on Crete, bringing ancient Greek legends to life just as a new century dawned amid far-reaching questions about human history, art, and culture. With Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism, Cathy Gere relates the fascinating story of Evans's excavation and its long-term effects on Western culture. After the World War I left the Enlightenment dream in tatters, the lost paradise that Evans offered in the concrete labyrinth--pacifist and matriarchal, pagan and cosmic--seemed to offer a new way forward for writers, artists, and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Graves, and Hilda Doolittle.
Assembling a brilliant, talented, and eccentric cast at a moment of tremendous intellectual vitality and wrenching change, Cathy Gere paints an unforgettable portrait of the age of concrete and the birth of modernism.
Author: Cathy Gere
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 04/30/2011
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9780226289540
ISBN10: 0226289540
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | General
- Literary Criticism | Ancient and Classical
- History | Western Europe | General
About the Author
Cathy Gere is assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of The Tomb of Agamemnon.