The study of myth is a necessary "key" for approaching and understanding the ancient Greek world, and Jean-Pierre Vernant is among those scholars who have systematically worked towards revealing its secrets.
In his work "Myth and Society in Ancient Greece," Vernant proposes a complex interpretation of the ancient Greek world through the decoding of the functioning of a complex system of religious, social, and political parameters. The author harmoniously combines traditional philological training and knowledge with the contemporary perspective of an intellectual who seeks, alongside the beauty and excellence of the ancient Greek world, the tensions, contradictions, and conflicts that compose its wonderful but sometimes abhorrent face.
Ancient Greek literature, religion, and history, on the one hand, Marxism, structuralism, social anthropology, on the other hand, are masterfully combined by Vernant in order to shed light on the ways in which the mythological thinking of the Greeks reflects the broader political and social contexts in which ancient Greek civilization was born and flourished.