Entertaining mythology. The legends of ancient Greece. Gasparov M.L.

“Entertaining mythology” is one of the last books of Mikhail Gasparov. Publications in Russian, in which ancient Greek myths would be retold, came out a lot, but the merit of Gasparov was that he was almost the first researcher who presented Greek mythology not as a collection of heterogeneous heroic plots, but as a single history of relations between gods and people. The plot of this story-the creation of peace and people, the climax-the victory of the gods with the help of people over the dark forces of nature (gigantomachia) and the denouement-the self-destruction of heroes who are no longer needed by the gods, in two world, by the then standards, wars: Theban and Trojan.

The appendix shows the scientist’s genre experiments written in the spirit of the Russian folk tale: “The Tale of Hercules” and “The Tale of Amur and Psyche” and the story “Pieces”.

The myth for an antique person - Not fiction, but a way to comprehend the phenomenon of nature and know the sacrament of being. Thanks to the exciting narrative of Gasparov, the modern reader can find out how the world has seen, the ancient Greeks themselves and the surrounding themselves.