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The Road to Delphi: Scenes from the History of Oracles
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The Road to Delphi: Scenes from the History of Oracles
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by Michael Wood
Sales Rank : 938728
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Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition August 14, 2003
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374526109
ISBN-13: 978-0374526108
Product Dimensions:
8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
From Booklist
The oracular tradition is an immensely rich and provocative subject, and literary critic Wood's wide-ranging and penetrating scrutiny is cogently philosophical, keenly aesthetic, and gratifyingly entertaining. The allure of oracle stories resides in the fact that ambiguity and skepticism are intrinsic to the proceedings: the pronouncements of oracles tend to take the form of unsolvable riddles and puns. As Wood ponders the perverse inscrutability of prophecies, he wonders if fate is escapable, muses over "our need for stories of equivocation," and places "the labor of interpretation" high among humankind's most persistent habits of being. The story of Oedipus is Wood's touchstone, and he adeptly parses an array of interpretations from the classics to the work of Stravinsky. He traces the fate of oracles after Christ, analyzes the role of oracles in Shakespeare and Kafka, then delves into such lesser yet nonetheless effective vehicles as The Matrix. What emerges most poignantly from Wood's imaginative and learned inquiry is a renewed appreciation of our species' creativity and contrariness, and the universal and timeless power of stories. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Review
"Michael Wood’s The Road to Delphi is a refreshingly original and sometimes startling re-reading of oracles, from ancient ambiguities on through Shakespeare to our current perplexities of medicine and terrorism. For Wood, the gods keep returning, but only to confound us."
--Harold Bloom
"If not an oracular pronouncement, then a source of terrific and myriad pleasures. Michael Wood’s The Road to Delphi is all that and then some."
--James McManus, author of Positively Fifth Street
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