This grippingly written and provocative book boldly reveals how the ancient world mobilised concepts of 'the animal' and 'animality' to conceive of the human in a variety of illuminating ways. Through ten stories about marvelous mythical beings - from the Trojan Horse to the Cyclops, and from Androcles' lion to the Minotaur - Julia Kindt unlocks fresh ways of thinking about humanity that extend from antiquity to the present and that ultimately challenge our understanding of who we really are.
Uses some of the most famous ancient stories and the marvelous creatures at their core to address one of the biggest questions of all time: what makes us humanEntertainingly unpacks perennially fascinating myths - such as those about the Trojan Horse, the Sphinx, and the Minotaur - to shed new light on existential discussions of 'the human' and 'the animalExplores the transporting power of storytelling to think about humanity while constructing its own arresting narrative of revelatory tale-telling