ABSTRACT
Composed by Jules Cashford and Craig San Roque, the invocations identify and address principal characters or highlight themes that feature in the book’s chapters. The authors’ introduction describes the rationale for a practice that follows ancient poetic convention, such as used in the Homeric Hymns, where the poet, before entering a recitation, addresses with humility specific divinities, muses, or powers of nature. Characters, divinities, themes, or places addressed in the invocations include the island of Thera, the Eumenides, Aeschylus, Thebes, the Sphinx, Jocasta, Dionysos, Orpheus, Persephone/Eleusis, Ajax/Paranoia, Greek nihilism, human folly, St. Perpetua/Rome/Damascus, Crete/Ariadne/Labyrinth, and Gaia.
