Curated playlist
Mythographers
- Jaan PuhvelAt twelve, Jaan Puhvel fled Estonia with his family in April 1944.
- Jacob GrimmJacob Grimm and his brother expected their dictionary to take roughly ten years. It was finished in 1961.
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
- Thomas BulfinchThomas Bulfinch hoped his book would become "a Classical Dictionary for the parlor." The American author was born on the 15th of July 1796 and died on the 27th of May 1867. He never saw the volume that carries his name today. Bulfinch's…
- James George FrazerJames George Frazer wrote about world cultures without ever doing fieldwork. He relied on mailed questionnaires.
- Roland BarthesRoland Barthes was walking home through the streets of Paris on the 25th of February 1980 when the driver of a laundry van knocked him down. A month later, on the 26th of March, he died from the pulmonary complications that followed. He…
- Jane Ellen HarrisonA lecture on Athenian gravestones in Glasgow drew 1,600 people. The speaker was classicist Jane Ellen Harrison.
- Ken DowdenWhat did Greek myths actually do for the people who told them? Classicist Ken Dowden has spent his career asking.
- Károly KerényiKároly Kerényi handed back his passport in 1944 and became a stateless refugee.
- Snorri SturlusonSnorri Sturluson was killed in a cellar in 1241 as he begged, "Do not strike." Seventy men rode to his Icelandic home.