Myths on the Map

The spatial turn in the humanities has fuelled new ways of thinking about landscape as a lived environment which is radically affected by human hands and human minds, and which radically affects human experience. At the same time, scholars of Greek myth have become more sensitive to the contextual dynamics which animate the mythic tradition, having come to see storytelling as an activity which is both precisely situated in, and contingent on, its environment. This volume, which derives in part from the series of Bristol International Myth Conferences, brings together 15 chapters on the spatiality of Greek myth and its interrelationships with the landscapes of the Mediterranean. It displays the myriad ways in which Greek storytelling shaped, and was shaped by, its environment. The chapters display diverse approaches and introduce a wide range of material, taking in Greek poetic, geographical, mythographical, and historiographical texts, and archaeological and visual sources. Chronologically, they cover the full scope of Greek antiquity from the archaic period to the imperial period; geographically, they incorporate discussions of landscapes in mainland Greece, Magna Graecia, and Asia Minor.