Skip to content
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL DOMESTIC ORDERS $35+
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL US ORDERS $35+
Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth

Availability:
in stock, ready to be shipped
Save 0% Save 0%
$18.00
$18.00 - $18.00
$18.00
$17.99
$17.99 - $17.99
$17.99
A feminist reinterpretation of the myths surrounding Cleopatra casts new light on the Egyptian queen and her legacy
 
“A lucid and persuasive reinterpretation. Readers won’t see Cleopatra the same way again.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Where Prose really sparkles: her critiques of the cultural depictions of Cleopatra.”—Allison Arieff, San Francisco Chronicle
 
The siren passionately in love with Mark Antony, the seductress who allegedly rolled out of a carpet she had herself smuggled in to see Caesar, Cleopatra is a figure shrouded in myth. Beyond the legends immortalized by Plutarch, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and others, there are no journals or letters written by Cleopatra herself. All we have to tell her story are words written by others. What has it meant for our understanding of Cleopatra to have had her story told by writers who had a political agenda, authors who distrusted her motives, and historians who believed she was a liar?
 
Francine Prose delves into ancient Greek and Roman literary sources, as well as modern representations of Cleopatra in art, theater, and film, to challenge narratives driven by orientalism and misogyny and offer a new interpretation of Cleopatra’s history through the lens of our current era.

ISBN-13: 9780300274158

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Yale University Press

Publication Date: 10-17-2023

Pages: 208

Product Dimensions: 5.00(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

Series: Ancient Lives

Francine Prose is the author of numerous books, including Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife; and Reading Like a Writer. A Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College, she lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I The Life of Cleopatra

Chapter 1 The Ptolemaic Background 19

Chapter 2 A Transfer of Power 37

Chapter 3 Caesar and Cleopatra 49

Chapter 4 Mark Antony 79

Chapter 5 The Final Act Begins 95

Chapter 6 The Snake 121

Part II The Afterlife of Cleopatra

Chapter 7 The Pearl 143

Chapter 8 Shakespeare's Cleopatra 149

Chapter 9 Cleopatra on Film 161

Chronology 179

Genealogy 181

Bibliography 183

Acknowledgments 187

Index 189