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LANGDON, Susan, Art and identity in Dark Age Greece, 1100-700 B.C.E. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008. XVIII,388p. ills.(B&W photographs and line drawings). Original imitation leather bound with dust wrps. Nice copy. 'Whether or not she is persuasive in explaining every image, L. has managed here something quite remarkable. Scholarship has been locked into fruitless debate about whether particular myths can be identified, whether particular life-histories are commemorated and what exactly we should be recogniscing in 'Mistress of the Animals' motifs. L. liberates it by uncovering a discourse that is about growing up, establishing oneself as a man or woman, forming marital bonds and shaping household roles. This discourse works through replaying cult rituals with their stylised actions (dancing) and props (masks), redeploying the character-types from stories (centaurs, amazons) and remarking the moments of high tension in ordinary life. Where others have sought to credit geometric artists with intentions which they had no means of fulfilling (..), or have ignored the variety of images as everything became generic (...) L. offers a reading that takes what the artists give us and makes sense of their active choices. (...0 All this highly varied material, along with tables summarising the total picture (all known young female burials, all dances on Argive and Athenian Late Geometric pottery, all sanctuary sites with maiden dance iconography), comes in support of very particular arguments. (...) Even those not immediately persuaded by the answers will have to face up to L.'s questions.' (ROBIN OSBORNE in The Classical Review (New Series), 2010, pp.259-261). From the library of Prof. Carl Deroux. € 55.00 (Antiquarian) ISBN: 9780521513210