Jocasta The MotherWife of Oedipus Tapestry of Bronze eBook Victoria Grossack Alice Underwood
Download As PDF : Jocasta The MotherWife of Oedipus Tapestry of Bronze eBook Victoria Grossack Alice Underwood 
Young and beautiful, born to a powerful family, Jocasta is destined to become Queen of Thebes... trapped in a loveless marriage, she cannot save her firstborn child from her husband's wrath... left alone on the throne after her husband's death, she must contend with the dangerous Sphinx and contrive a plan to protect her city...charmed by a foreign prince, she does not know she is falling in love with her own son...
A vibrant tale set in Bronze Age Greece, Jocasta has garnered rave reviews from university faculty, publications such as Historical Novels Reviews Online, and numerous readers. A Greek-language version of Jocasta was released by Kedros Publishers of Athens in 2006.
Jocasta The MotherWife of Oedipus Tapestry of Bronze eBook Victoria Grossack Alice Underwood
This book is pretty good and is told from the viewpoint of Oedipus' wife-mother. This is typical Greek mythology and knowing the story it is given that there can only be a tragic ending. I have been looking for a book about Oedipus that I read many years ago and sadly I do not know the name or the author. It has Oedipus as the storyteller and I have looked all over Amazon for it but to no avail. When I saw this book I thought I would at least try it and it had good reviews. I did like it and I hope some day to run across the other book.Product details
|
Tags : Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus (Tapestry of Bronze) - Kindle edition by Victoria Grossack, Alice Underwood. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus (Tapestry of Bronze).,ebook,Victoria Grossack, Alice Underwood,Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus (Tapestry of Bronze),Fiction Historical,History Ancient Greece
People also read other books :
- The Book of Zines Readings from the Fringe eBook Chip Rowe
- The Autobiography of a Flea Anonymous Helen Thompson Books
- The Woman Who Loved the Moon And Other Stories eBook Elizabeth A Lynn
- New Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change (Audible Audio Edition) Winifred Gallagher Laural Merlington Brilliance Audio Books
- PS from Dad Alison Ashe 9781461086086 Books
Jocasta The MotherWife of Oedipus Tapestry of Bronze eBook Victoria Grossack Alice Underwood Reviews
This book makes the ancient myth feel so alive that you begin to think that it could have really happened this way. Jocasta tells the story-confessing everything-to one of her daughters before she dies. I only wish there were more to the book, but the mob is threatening to storm the palace and rip her from limb to limb-something the mobs of Thebes have done in the past, so the danger was real.
Loved it! It was an easy read. Well told and extremely hard to put down, even though we all know how it ends.
What an enjoyable read! The Greek myths were not novels or anything like them, even in Homer's telling. So it's great to delve back in and give them novelistic heft, which this book does quite well. Despite the non-action-packed subject matter of the Oedipus myth, and despite the rather heavy lunk of scholarship it wears on its sleeve, the book manages to be an absorbing page-turner.
The writing is engaging, playful, odd, right on the mark, flowered with surprising cultural history and imbued with emotional resonance. The thread of destiny and its relation to faith is both gripping and nuanced, and has, as does the whole tale, the tang of the real. Those familiar with the story will have a few of those silent-on-a-peak-in-Darien moments.
The description "page-turner" is aptly used by previous reviewers, and I'll echo it. Indeed, I found this telling of a classic story from a new perspective hard to put down, even though the ending toward which it was moving was inevitable and known. The historical background is solidly researched, and the narrative style lively. Letting us glimpse Antigone as a frustratingly difficult adolescent was a clever stroke. (We know too well where that stubborn child is heading!) A number of other secondary characters were vividly sketched, yet I must add that they engaged my imagination and sympathy more than they apparently did the interest of the story's central character. Iokaste herself seems oddly self-centered and unreflective, and fails to mature emotionally during the course of years.
You know those quirky fictions that re-tell a major event of history or legend from a supporting character's point of view? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Girl With a Pearl Earring, The Other Boleyn Girl, and on and on. Historical fiction, especially romance, is a perfect genre for this angle, since the "silent majority" of supporting characters in our iconic cultural stories are women.
Queen Jocasta could not be considered a "silent" supporting character in the Oedipus legend, except that the main source of our knowledge of her was a play written by a man, making Oedipus the main character, and Jocasta died offstage. Which leaves the ultra-juicy question, "What did Jocasta know and when did she know it?"
Grossack and Underwood throw themselves into Jocasta's first-person narrative with gusto, delivering a page-turner of a love story constructed like a political suspense thriller. Even though we *know* the ending, the authors build the tension by piling secret upon secret, twist upon revelation, all of it new to the characters living through it, and the final collapse is a genuine whirlwind of power.
The authors' inventions make the time, the people, and their choices plausible to us in the modern world, although it takes a strong suspension of disbelief to accept that in that era, people simply understood ghastly events as the actions of the gods, and beyond human control. Basically, if you could spin a good story, people believed you. Whatever a king or queen or nobleman said was the truth, *was* the truth, because the gods had given that person their power. Thus it takes both Jocasta and Creon an inordinately long time to view an early disaster as a premeditated plot rather than divine punishment. In the world of "Jocasta," cynical realism about political intrigue and subterfuge are the privilege of the highly educated and highly placed; Jocasta has her brother Creon to put things in perspective, and she earns her own smarts over the decades of running Thebes with his help.
Among the best of the authors' inventions are who/what the Sphinx really was, and how the seer Tiresias managed to a) live so long and b) switch genders. These two figures, so crucial to the Oedipus legend, become equally crucial to the "realistic" life of Jocasta written here, providing motives and forces both political and personal that drive Jocasta and Creon to drastic actions.
The legend of Oedipus has given a narrative shape to our psyches, desires, and language, hence the "Oedipus complex." "Complex" certainly describes the Jocasta of Grossack and Underwood's novel -- her heart and mind are as deep and powerful as any great heroine's.
I've loved Greek myths since I was a boy so when I encountered this book through a review, I looked forward to a new telling of the Oedipus story in the form of a novel. The new point of view was particularly interesting because of the authors' command of the details of both Greek life both secular and religious. Further, the character development is believable and entrancing. This is particularly unusual when dealing with myths where, to maintain their archetyple identities, each character plays their unchanging role and does not deviate - there is no character development. Truly incredible was the treatment of Tiresius. A great book - I hope the authors have more books in their plans for the future.
Even if you don't know the story of Oedipus in ancient Greek mythology, this take on "how it may have unfolded" rewards greatly. Jocasta, queen of Thebes is given a human side. Jocasta and her brother Creon are embroiled in political intrigue. She wants both love and the best for Thebes, struggling with the conflict the two bring. The authors take the Greek myth and demystify it. Tension and suspense drive the plot. The period detail is impressive. What appears to be a heavy subject is remarkably illuminating and accessible.
There will be two sequels highlighting other figures from ancient Greece.
Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of Crestmont
This book is pretty good and is told from the viewpoint of Oedipus' wife-mother. This is typical Greek mythology and knowing the story it is given that there can only be a tragic ending. I have been looking for a book about Oedipus that I read many years ago and sadly I do not know the name or the author. It has Oedipus as the storyteller and I have looked all over for it but to no avail. When I saw this book I thought I would at least try it and it had good reviews. I did like it and I hope some day to run across the other book.
0 Response to "[YZE]∎ [PDF] Gratis Jocasta The MotherWife of Oedipus Tapestry of Bronze eBook Victoria Grossack Alice Underwood"
Post a Comment