Trojan Horses
Saving the Classics from Conservatives
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- $49.99
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- $49.99
Publisher Description
We've become accustomed to the wisdom of the ancient Greeks being trotted out by conservatives in the name of timeless virtues. At the same time, critics have charged that multiculturalists and their ilk have hopelessly corrupted the study of antiquity itself, and that the teaching of Classics is dead.
Trojan Horses is Page duBois's answer to those who have appropriated material from antiquity in the service of a conservative political agenda — among them, Camille Paglia, Allan Bloom, and William Bennett. She challenges cultural conservatives' appeal to the authority of the classics by arguing that their presentation of ancient Greece is simplistic, ahistorical, and irreparably distorted by their politics. As well as constructing a devastating critique of these pundits, Trojan Horses seeks to present a more complex and more accurate view of ancient Greek politics, sex, and religion, with a Classics primer. She eloquently recounts the tales of Daedalus and Artemis, for example, conveying their complexity and passion, while also unearthing actions and beliefs that do not square so easily with today's "family values." As duBois writes, "Like Bennett, I think we should study the past, but not to find nuggets of eternal wisdom. Rather we can comprehend in our history a fuller range of human possibilities, of beginnings, of error, and of difference."
In these fleet chapters, duBois offers readers a view of the ancient Greeks that is more nuanced, more subtle, more layered and in every way more historical than the portrait other writers, of whatever stripe, want to popularize and see displayed in our classrooms. Sharp, timely, and engaging, Trojan Horses portrays the richness of ancient Greek culture while riding in to rescue the Greeks from the new barbarians.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
DuBois (a professor of classics at UC-San Diego and author of Sappho Is Burning) proffers a highly polemical attack on what she believes are ill-founded attempts by conservatives to use the literature, history and mythology of Greco-Roman antiquity to advance their moral agendas. Some of her targets are well known, like William Bennett (the book's main villain) and Allan Bloom; others will be familiar primarily to those who follow academic discourse. The arguments against the offending conservatives are many, but the book's major target is the claim that there are enduring moral and political lessons to be learned from ancient wisdom that we can use to improve our own society. DuBois disputes these conclusions by arguing that those with whom she has issue distort through simplification the context and meaning of much of their evidence evidence that is open to a more nuanced and sophisticated interpretation. The book concentrates on evidence from " the sexual practices of the classical period in Athens, the radical democracy of ancient Athens and the polytheism of the ancient Greeks." The author argues that, when looked at in detail, the ancient wisdom used by conservatives is culled from a brutish, warlike and sexist culture that offers little of the ethical comfort to the modern world that conservatives claim.
