The Gardens of Adonis:
Spices in Greek Mythology
Marcel Detienne
Translated by Janet Lloyd
Introduction by Jean-Pierre Vernant

Second edition
With a new afterword by the author

Paper | 1994 | $29.95 / £20.95
256 pp. | 5 x 8 | 7 halftones 30 graphs

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Rich with implications for the history of sexuality, gender issues, and patterns of Hellenic literary imagining, Marcel Detienne's landmark book recasts long-standing ideas about the fertility myth of Adonis. The author challenges Sir James Frazer's thesis that the vegetation god Adonis-- whose premature death was mourned by women and whose resurrection marked a joyous occasion--represented the annual cycle of growth and decay in agriculture. Using the analytic tools of structuralism, Detienne shows instead that the festivals of Adonis depict a seductive but impotent and fruitless deity--whose physical ineptitude led to his death in a boar hunt, after which his body was found in a lettuce patch. Contrasting the festivals of Adonis with the solemn ones dedicated to Demeter, the goddess of grain, he reveals the former as a parody and negation of the institution of marriage.

Detienne considers the short-lived gardens that Athenian women planted in mockery for Adonis's festival, and explores the function of such vegetal matter as spices, mint, myrrh, cereal, and wet plants in religious practice and in a wide selection of myths. His inquiry exposes, among many things, attitudes toward sexual activities ranging from "perverse" acts to marital relations.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction
	Translator's Note
	Foreword	1
Ch. 1	The Perfumes of Arabia	5
Ch. 2	The Spice Ox	37
Ch. 3	From Myrrh to Lettuce	60
Ch. 4	The Misfortunes of Mint	72
Ch. 5	The Seed of Adonis	99
Ch. 6	The Lettuce of Pythagoras	123
	Afterword	133
	Notes to the Text	147
	Index	195

Series:

• Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology

Subject Areas:

• Mind, Body, Spirit
• Classics
• Anthropology
• Gender Studies

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For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia
Paper: $29.95 ISBN13: 978-0-691-00104-3

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India
Paper: £20.95 ISBN13: 978-0-691-00104-3

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