Bernard Sergent

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Bernard Sergent (born in 1946) is a French ancient historian and comparative mythologist. He is researcher of the CNRS and president of the Société de mythologie française.

Sergent has written a seminal work on Greek mythology entitled Homosexuality in Greek Myth (Payot 1984), translated into English two years later by Beacon Press. In 1986, he followed up with a study covering early homosexuality in Europe, under the title of L'homosexualité initiatique dans l'Europe ancienne (Payot 1986), which has yet to be translated into English. The two studies have been published together, with a postface, as Homosexualité et initiation chez les peuples indo-européens (Payot 1996 ISBN 2-228-89052-9).

In Genèse de L'Inde (Payot 1992 ISBN 2-228-89116-9), he attacks the recent anti-invasionist reconstructions of early Indian history. Instead he defends the traditional hypothesis that the Indo-Aryans invaded India in the 2nd millennium BC. According to Sergent, the Dravidian populations are not autochthonous either, but of African origin.

The book Les Indo-Européens - Histoire, langues, mythes (Payot 1995 ISBN 2-228-88956-3) is a general introduction to the Indo-European language familiy. Sergent associates the Indo-European language family with certain archaeological cultures in Southern Russia, and he reconstructs an Indo-European religion (relying on the method of Georges Dumézil).

In the monograph, Les trois fonctions indo-européennes en Grèce ancienne, vol. 1: De Mycènes aux Tragique (Économica 1998 ISBN 2-7178-3587-3), Sergent examines the employment of the Dumézilian tripartite system in Greek epic, lyric and dramatic poetry. In a second volume, which has not been published yet, he will continue this examination with Greek philosophy and religion.

His recent work, Celtes et Grecs, is dedicated to comparative Greek and Celtic mythology. In volume 1, Le livre de héros (Payot 1999 ISBN 2-228-89257-2), the Irish hero Cuchulainn is compared with the Greek heroes Achilleus, Bellerophon and Melanthius and the Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge with the Greek Iliad, which, according to Sergent, presuppose an Indo-European "pre-Iliad". In volume 2, Le livre des dieux (Payot 2004 ISBN 2-228-89926-7), Sergent argues that the Celtic and Greek pantheons derive from a common Indo-European inheritance.

  • Homosexuality in Greek myth (transl. of L'homosexualité dans la mythologie grecque); Beacon Press, Boston, 1986. ISBN 0-8070-5700-2
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