The Return of the Golden Age from Antiquity to the 21st Century: Receptions of a Classical Motif

The Return of the Golden Age from Antiquity to the 21st Century: Receptions of a Classical Motif

Susanna de Beer, Ruben Poelstra (eds.) 

This book represents the first reception history of the classical myth of the “Golden Age” from Antiquity up until the present. The introduction proposes “Golden Age thinking” as a set of connected ideas about the flexible organization of time, morality and divine interventions. The case-studies reveal the different ways this has been and still is being used to promote a particular vision of the future by connecting it to an idealized vision of a lost past. Together they offer a toolkit for understanding this motif’s enduring power, and reconstruct the trajectory during which Greco-Roman antiquity, from being the origin of the Golden Age myth, was transformed into a kind of Golden Age itself. 

 

eBook published on:

June 23, 2026

eBook ISBN:

9789004762848

Front matter:

12

Main content:

376