The Dynamics of Greek Myth: Athenian Autochthony as a Case Study

Combining structural analysis, historical enquiry and intertextual reading, this book offers a fresh interpretation of one of antiquity’s most enduring myths, autochthony, and provides a model for studying myths as living processes of cultural imagination. Moving beyond approaches that treat myth as either a fixed symbolic system or a reflection of history, the book proposes a new framework for understanding myth as a dynamic cultural force.It argues that myths operate through the interplay of contextuality, structurality, and dialogicality, absorbing historical pressures, encoding symbolic tensions, and inviting reinterpretation across genres and generations.This framework is examined through the Athenian myths of autochthony-the claim that the Athenians originated from the soil of Attica.By tracing these narratives from early Greek poetry to classical civic ideology, tragedy, and philosophy, the author illustrates how autochthony influenced debates concerning gender, kinship, social