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Zero to Hero, Hero to Zero: In Search of the Classical Hero
Editor: Lydia Langerwerf and Cressida Ryan
Date Of Publication: Oct 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2391-3
Isbn: 1-4438-2391-0
Hercules is a hero; we were all brought up to appreciate the basic idea of the ancient hero. But what about him makes him one? This book aims to challenge some of the standard expectations as to what constitutes a hero, considering the phenomenon of heroism from a range of viewpoints. In this book we invite you to walk around the monumental notions of the hero and heroism, and endeavour to reach out and touch them on all sides. The chapters in this volume testify to the difficulty of answering the question ‘what is a hero?’ and engage with a variety of themes in attempting to offer some replies. They demonstrate not just the variety of ways in which the protagonists of ancient literature can be deemed heroic, but also the tendency for aspects of heroism to turn sour once identified. It seems that the moment we recognise heroic features, we are forced to question them. Do heroes necessitate anti-heroes, for example? Portraying protagonists’ heroic qualities in an ambigous light focuses the reader’s attention on the problem of realising the ideals of heroism in historic actuality. Various chapters ask the rhetorical question of whether we should expect, or more importantly, desire historical actors to behave like mythical heroes. To what extent can a hero ever be integrated into normal society? What difference might there be between a tragic and an epic hero? The commonplace ‘The only good hero is a dead hero’ summarises the extent to which this book also focuses on heroic death and dying. Covering Euripides to Monty Python, Roman soldiers to the modern military, this volume offers the reader a chance to think about the changing notion of the hero and recognise heroic qualities throughout western culture.
Lydia Langerwerf studied Ancient History at the Universities of Groningen and Cambridge. She was recently awarded a PhD at Nottingham for her thesis ‘“No Freer than the Helots”: Messenian Rebel Behaviour in Pausanias’ Messeniaka in Comparative Perspective.’ The dissertation developed from her interests in the history and ideology of slavery and other forms of bonded labour in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Other research interests include Greek and Latin concepts of courage, African-American and Caribbean classical scholarship and classical historiography.
Cressida Ryan is the Classics Outreach Officer at the University of Oxford. She studied Classics at Cambridge, also taking an MPhil there specialising in Ancient Literature and reception, before teaching in boarding schools. She has recently completed a PhD at Nottingham entitled ‘Eighteenth-century responses to Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus,’ a synchronic, interdisciplinary study of the play’s scholarship and performance reception in eighteenth-century England and France. Other research interests include Neo-Latin literature, theological Greek, Classics and education, alongside music and Greek tragedy more widely.
Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99
Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)
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From Navigating Music and Sound Education
“We rarely have the opportunity and time to engage with the practicalities of music teaching through the lens of evidence-based practice. This book provides us with a wonderful exception that is accessible to beginning and established teachers. It contains a wide range of stimulating and thought-provoking material that draws on real-world experiences and events, which are contextualised, informed and structured by theory. This is a powerful combination that we can visit again and again for insight and inspiration. Congratulations to all involved, particularly the editors for shaping such a valuable contribution!”
—Professor Graham F. Welch, University of London; President, International Society of Music Education
“Navigating music and sound education draws together a range of issues increasingly acknowledged to be at the basis of reflective and effective music learning and teaching: social settings, cultural dimensions, gender, indigeneity, varying cognitive approaches, inter-disciplinary connections, technology, types of learning, and creativity. It opens up areas of pedagogy that go beyond classroom methodology to acknowledge student individuality and encourage music learning and teaching grounded in the reality of students’ musical and social lives. It will be invaluable for those training to become educators and for teachers already in the field.”
—Associate Professor Peter Dunbar-Hall, University of Sydney
“This book brings an important contribution to music teacher education as it challenges the readers to rethink their paradigms of music education. It highlights the importance of preparing a reflective teacher, autonomous, creative and conscious of the multifaceted and multicultural locus in which they will work. The book also draws on the importance for music teachers to consider the context in which they work, and establish a dialog between local musical traditions, informal music practices and global trends of music teaching and learning. Most importantly, all chapters are in one way or another derived from research carried out on specific areas, thus stressing the importance of the research informed practice in music education.”
—Professor Liane Hentschke, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; International Society of Music Education Immediate Past President
Many readers will appreciate Steve Dillon and Kathy Hirche’s description of the future of education in their work with dynamic technological contexts.
Navigating Music and Sound Education is a wonderful guide and resource for pre-service music teachers, for teachers in the field, and for teacher educators.
It offers a range of fresh perspectives on the state of music education as it is and as it might be. Kari K Veblen
Navigating Music and Sound Education is an ambitious project which features current research from 20 individuals whose professional identities run the gamut from musician to songwriter to student to educator to music therapist to ethnomusicologist. The book’s scope is perhaps the most exciting aspect of Navigating Music and Sound Education.
Kari K Veblen
University of Western Ontario
British Journal of Music Education
October 2011
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