#and this is why I have such a bad time reading the writings of Detienne and other structuralist classicists

[deathlessathanasia]

"Detienne, taking as his key the well-known myth that Adonis' pregnant mother Myrrha or Smyrna (both Greek words for myrrh) was metamorphosed into a myrrh tree, from whose trunk the newborn in due time emerged, sees Adonis as essentially the fruit of an aromatic shrub, a perfume, an anti-agricultural product. His method is to find a counter-phenomenon in Attic society, in response to which the Adonia can take their significance: surely the Thesmophoria, the autumn festival in honor of Demeter at which the women of Athens celebrated the growth of food crops. Detienne finds a further, sociological opposition here: the Thesmophoria were celebrated only by the wives of Athenian citizens; the Adonia were notoriously celebrated by prostitutes. He positions Adonis and the data of his cult within various oppositional codes discernible in Greek culture-each illustrated by a diagram-that parallel one another quite precisely, replicating the same meaning in different terms: aromatically, Adonis stands for heady perfume; botanically, for profitless agriculture; socially, for seduction and extramarital pleasure. The Adonia, Detienne declares, were a celebration of infertility and fruitless sex, a spectacular illustration of the dangers of untrammeled female sexuality, serving to balance and emphasize the autumn celebration of fruitfulness and legitimate connubiality in the service of the polis.

But much evidence slips through Detienne's grid. In several versions of the birth of Adonis myrrh has no place: in our earliest his mother is one Alphesiboea ([Hes.], fr. 139 M-W); in another she is one Metharme ([Apollod.], Bibl. 3.14.3). Philostephanus of Cyrene made him the son of Zeus alone (ap. [Probus] on Verg., Ecl. 10.18).22 As for the carnival of whores, the Adoniac festivities in brothels in Diphilus, fr. 42.38-41 PCG and Alciphron 4.14.8 (based on fourth-century comedy), are to be supplemented by Aristophanes, Lys. 391-96, and Menander, Sam. 35-50, in which wives and daughters of citizens celebrate the Adonia. Most surprisingly, Detienne's theory takes only passing account of the ritual lamentation, which ancient sources make the most conspicuous feature of the festival, and in general ignores what the celebrants themselves thought of what they were doing-unless we are to imagine that the women of Athens climbed onto their roofs once a year deliberately to celebrate their own failings to the community. There was probably another reason, one which feminist studies of the cult have begun to seek.

Another assumption, however, more fundamentally flaws Detienne's interpretation. While proposing to tease an inherent meaning from Athenian cult practice by identifying the inherent correspondences and oppositions within it, Detienne fails to define a perspective more specific than a homogeneous Greco-Roman society. Adonis, for example, must have meant many things to many people at many times (even different things to the same people at different times), but Detienne's formula assumes that he meant essentially the same thing to everybody, no matter how many borders of nation, culture, language, gender, or time he may have crossed-as if any detail of the myth of Adonis tapped into one immanent meaning and could be adduced for the significance of the Athenian cult. Rhetorical motives are undifferentiated: a line of Sappho is treated equally with a line of Philodemus; the testimony of Aristophanes is put on a par with the testimony of St. Cyril. This method is programmatic and derives from Levi-Strauss, who articulates the principle thus vis-A-vis his interpretation of Oedipus: "[W]e define the myth as consisting of all its versions; or to put it otherwise, a myth remains the same as long as it is felt as such." Combining details from diverse myths of Adonis, regardless of date or provenance, Detienne treats the resulting conglomeration as a single sacred tale holding a precious key to the meaning of the ritual. But for whom does it hold meaning? For Detienne alone. Purportedly context-based, his method actually isolates phenomena from their diverse cultural uses and recontextualizes them into an artificial code that transcends the messy inconsistencies of Greek thought."

- The Sexuality of Adonis by Joseph D. Reed

#adonis #adonia #festivals #ancient greece #greek mythology #structuralism #excerpts #article #and this is why I have such a bad time reading the writings of Detienne and other structuralist classicists #not that they don't write a lot of interesting and insightful stuff #but the homogenizing of all versions of a myth (no matter the date or author or language) into one coherent account #and the extrapolation of meaning from that one ahistorical version that the author has just created #is just not something I care about #and I also feel that the interpretation of the gods from a structuralist perspective can be reductive #and necessitates the ignoring or dismissal of sources that don't fit so neatly into the proposed binary #ex: Poseidon=brute force of nature so he engenders the horse; Athena=civilization and technology so she creates the bridle to tame it #just ignore that in some sources it is Poseidon himself who invents the bridle #I mean yeah the idea does have merit #but ancient Greek mythology and religion are complex and messy and diverse and even contradictory

[the---hermit]

Hi! I don't want to pressure you into talking about something you really don't wanna talk about, but what exactly is so bad about the book you're studying? So why exactly can't you get through it? Is it badly written or is the topic bad or...?

PS. If you decide to answer this please feel free to see this as an invite to vent and be whiny <3

Hello and thank you for letting be whiny, cause I am taking this book too personally. The book in question, aka my villain origin story is The Creation Of Mythology by Marcel Detienne. The way it's written and sometimes the language are melting my brain. I am not new to the subject, I have read a lot of mythology in my life, but most importantly I previously took both history of religions classes and anthropology of religions classes. I have never struggled with an assigned reading this much. I kod you not when I say sometimes I cannot tell if the author is exposing his own opinion, that of one of the academics he is talking about, and if this is the case which person he is talking about. There was one passage in which he was talking about a very specific author followed by a direct quote, now you'd think the quote was of the person he was talking about, BUT NO. Oooh no it was a quote of another author not previously mentioned nor introduced who had basically the opposite opinion of the former person he was talking about. And only after being very fucking confused about it you get who the author of the quote is (i am aware my explaination might be even more confused but my brain is not braining after today, so sorry). I am thankful I have some more specific background from things we said in class or else I genuinely don't know how much I would have understoon about this book. It's really maming me struggle, and the more I struggle the more I spiral. I am an anxious person, but I have come to know my worth academically, and this book is fucking that up too. I haven't seriously doubted my academic abilities like this in years. It feels almost like the first time I went to the archives and encountered the handwritten documents from the early 1700s I had to work on for my thesis, and in that case it became super easier after a little while, but not with this behated book.

I don't know if i answered your question but thanks cause this little rant did help to feel better. Also sorry cause i am pretty sure there's some typos from angry writing lmao.

#if i didn't answer well or you have other questions feel free to hit me up again #i know i am not super coherent about this book but i have a lot of feelings rn #cris speaks #ask #asked #asks #answered #the---hermit