Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism

Cathy Gere

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780226289540, 9780226289533
• eBook ISBN: 9780226289557
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: European History

In the spring of 1900, British archaeologist Arthur Evans began to excavate the palace of Knossos on Crete, bringing ancient Greek legends to life just as a new century dawned amid far-reaching questions about human history, art, and culture. With Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism, Cathy Gere relates the fascinating story of Evans's excavation and its long-term effects on Western culture. After the World War I left the Enlightenment dream in tatters, the lost paradise that Evans offered in the concrete labyrinth—pacifist and matriarchal, pagan and cosmic—seemed to offer a new way forward for writers, artists, and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Graves, and Hilda Doolittle. 

Assembling a brilliant, talented, and eccentric cast at a moment of tremendous intellectual vitality and wrenching change, Cathy Gere paints an unforgettable portrait of the age of concrete and the birth of modernism.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I. The Birth of Tragedy, 1822–1897
• II. Stand-up Tragedy, 1851–1899
• III. Ariadne’s Lament, 1900–1913
• IV. The Concrete Labyrinth, 1914–1935
• V. Psyche’s Labyrinth, 1919–1941
• VI. The Rebirth of Comedy, 1942–1949
• VII. The Birth of Farce, 1950–2000
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index