TY  - BOOK
AU  - Ziolkowski,Theodore
TI  - The Sin of Knowledge: Ancient Themes and Modern Variations 
SN  - 9780691223940
AV  - PN56.M95 
PY  - 2022///]
CY  - Princeton, NJ : 
PB  - Princeton University Press, 
KW  - Mythology in literature
KW  - LITERARY CRITICISM / General
KW  - bisacsh
KW  - Adapa
KW  - Aeschylus
KW  - Anacreon
KW  - Anaxagoras
KW  - Apollodorus
KW  - Beethoven, Ludwig van
KW  - Berman, Marshall
KW  - Borrow, Anthony
KW  - Camerarius, Joachim
KW  - Cleisthenes
KW  - Dali, Salvador
KW  - Damn Yankees
KW  - Dickens, Charles
KW  - Don Juan
KW  - Dyson, Freeman
KW  - Edwards, Jonathan
KW  - Erasmus, Desiderius
KW  - Greene, Graham
KW  - Hamlet
KW  - Heine, Heinrich
KW  - Herodotus
KW  - Herseyjohn
KW  - Hesiod
KW  - Institoris, Heinrich
KW  - Jerome, Saint
KW  - Jerusalem
KW  - Jonson, Ben
KW  - Keim, Andrew
KW  - Kirsch, Rainer
KW  - Klinger, Max
KW  - Kreitzer, Larry
KW  - Kupelwieser, Leopold
KW  - Legenda Aurea
KW  - Mailer, Norman
KW  - Mainzer, Otto
KW  - Malleus Maleficorum
KW  - Melanchthon, Philipp
KW  - Napoleon
KW  - Nono, Luigi
KW  - Olson, Elder
KW  - Orff, Carl
KW  - Paul, Saint
KW  - Peisistratus
KW  - Poussin, Nicholas
KW  - Prometheia
KW  - Quinet, Edgar
KW  - biblical criticism
KW  - chapbook
KW  - curiositas
KW  - etiology
KW  - forbidden knowledge
KW  - pact with devil
N1  - Frontmatter --; Content --; Illustrations --; Preface --; Prelude. The Timeless Topicality of Myth --; Part One. Ancient Themes --; Chapter One. Adam: The Genesis of Consciousness --; Chapter Two. Prometheus: T h e Birth of Civilization --; Chapter Three. Faust: The Ambivalence of Knowledge --; Interlude. From Mith to Modernity --; Part Two. Modern Variations --; Chapter Four. The Secularization of Adam --; Chapter Five. The Proletarianization of Prometheus --; Chapter Six. The Americanization of Faust --; Postlude. On the Uses and Abuses of Myth --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access
N2  - Adam, Prometheus, and Faust--their stories were central to the formation of Western consciousness and continue to be timely cautionary tales in an age driven by information and technology. Here Theodore Ziolkowski explores how each myth represents a response on the part of ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, and sixteenth-century Christian culture to the problem of knowledge, particularly humankind's powerful, perennial, and sometimes unethical desire for it. This book exposes for the first time the similarities underlying these myths as well as their origins in earlier trickster legends, and considers when and why they emerged in their respective societies. It then examines the variations through which the themes have been adapted by modern writers to express their own awareness of the sin of knowledge. Each myth is shown to capture the anxiety of a society when faced with new knowledge that challenges traditional values. Ziolkowski's examples of recent appropriations of the myths are especially provocative. From Voltaire to the present, the Fall of Adam has provided an image for the emergence from childhood innocence into the consciousness of maturity. Prometheus, as the challenger of authority and the initiator of technological evil, yielded an ambivalent model for the socialist imagination of the German Democratic Republic. And finally, an America unsettled by its responsibility for the atomic bomb, and worrying that in its postwar prosperity it had betrayed its values, recognized in Faust the disturbing image of its soul
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691223940?locatt=mode:legacy
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780691223940
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780691223940/original
ER  -