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Margaret Alexiou, After Antiquity: Greek Language, Myth, and Metaphor. Myth and Poetics Series. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. xvii + 567. ISBN 0-8014-3301-0. $65.00.
The author's brilliant Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1974) realizes a multidisciplinary and dazzling second act in this massive and eagerly-awaited analysis of how language defines the contours of both myth and metaphor. Selecting diverse texts ranging from New Testament Greek to twentieth-century folk genres, Alexiou (of Harvard University) assesses life-cycle rituals and metaphors that shape narratives and imagery in Greek tradition. Emphasis falls upon lesser-known sixth-twelfth century Byzantine Greek literary texts, as well as nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry and prose, and narrative songs and tales from the folk tradition-with particular stress upon two heretofore neglected genres, myth-tales and love songs (all translated here by the author). Moreover, the work highlights feminist issues (as does Ritual Lament), explores the connections between speech and ritual, surveys related Greek arts like dance, song and painting, and invokes the neurological disorder of autism, for which Alexiou draws on personal experience as the mother of autistic identical twins. Complemented by some one hundred pages of appendices, end notes, bibliography and indices, the book is divided into three principal parts-Language, Myth and Metaphor-of very roughly one hundred, one hundred fifty, then one hundred pages, respectively. The discussion...