Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism
Search in google:
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. Over the next three decades, Evans engaged in an unprecedented reconstruction project, creating a complex of concrete buildings on the site that owed at least as much to modernist architecture as they did to Bronze Age remains. In the process, he fired the imaginations of a whole generation of intellectuals and artists, whose work would drive movements as disparate as fascism and pacifism, feminism and psychoanalysis. 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. Gere shows how Evans’s often-fanciful account of ancient Minoan society captivated a generation riven by serious doubts about the fundamental values of European civilization. After the First World War 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 Freud, James Joyce, Georgio de Chirico, Robert Graves, Hilda Doolittle, all of whom emerge as forceful characters in Gere’s account. 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.New York Review of Books"[A] brilliant study of the role of Knossos in twentieth-century culture. . . . Gere writes with clarity and wit, but she never sacrifices the fascinating complexity of her tale to a simple story line."--Mary Beard, New York Review of Books— Mary Beard
Acknowledgements IntroductionI. The Birth of Tragedy, 1822-1897An Archaeology of Heroes A Prophecy of Tragedy What Ariadne IsII. Stand Up Tragedy, 1851-1899The Dry Smell of Time Eastern Questions The Road to the Labyrinth Greek Defeat Reconstructing the NationIII. Ariadne's Lament Ariadne's Throne The Great Cretan Mother Ariadne's Dancing Floor The Making of a Goddess The Villa Ariadne Cretan Victory Ariadne in Chirico CityIV. The Concrete Labyrinth, 1914-1935The Throne Room Complex Captain of the Blacks Court Ladies Priest-King and Cowgirls Lost Boys The Lady of Sports The Magic Ring The Psyche Element Little SoulsV. Psyche's Labyrinth, 1919-1949Mythical Method The Decline of Crete Achilles' Shield Freudian Archaeology Psyche's Muse Crete on the Couch The Battle of CreteVI. The Rebirth of Comedy, 1942-1949Psyche Reborn Paradise before Eve Psyche Rewritten The Consort New CreteVII. The Birth of Farce, 1950-2000Romantic Revivals The White Goddess Black Athena The Road Back to WarConclusionNotes Bibliography Index
