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Novels and films record and codify the cultural experiences of their people. This book explores the relationship between contemporary literature and film of the past fifty years and the ancient myths of Judeo-Christian, Greek, Celtic, and Eastern origin. Following a detailed description and explanation of both literary and film devices, stories that inform to a mythic tradition are analyzed to identify what they reveal about modern culture. This work explores such diverse subjects as heroism, coming of age, and morality. This approach to literature and film explores how contemporary fiction and film fulfill a continuum in our never-ending search to understand how life ought to be lived. Encompassing a broad spectrum of modern film and fiction, a variety of authors and directors are represented. Included are novels from such writers as Stephen King, Alice Walker, Ken Kesey, Jerzy Kosinski, Robert Penn Warren, and Michael Ondaatje. Film directors include Stephen Spielberg, Hal Ashby, Phil Alden Robinson, George Stevens, Robert Rossen, and Milos Forman. As a valuable resource for film and literature classes alike, this work also provides suggestions for student projects.
With The Modern Myths, brilliant science communicator Philip Ball spins a new yarn. From novels and comic books to B-movies, it is an epic exploration of literature, new media and technology, the nature of storytelling, and the making and meaning of our most important tales. Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called “modern myths.” But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did. Through the medium of narratives that all of us know in their basic outline and which have no clear moral or resolution, these modern myths explore some of our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties. We keep returning to these tales, reinventing them endlessly for new uses. But what are they really about, and why do we need them? What myths are still taking shape today? And what makes a story become a modern myth? In The Modern Myths, Ball takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our collective imagination, asking what some of its most popular stories reveal about the nature of being human in the modern age.
This book is the first major study that explores the intrinsic connection between music and myth, as Nietzsche conceived of it in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), in three great works of modern literature: Romain Rolland’s Nobel Prize winning novel Jean-Christophe (1904-12), James Joyce’s modernist epic Ulysses (1922), and Thomas Mann’s late masterpiece Doctor Faustus (1947). Juxtaposing Nietzsche’s conception of the Apollonian and Dionysian with narrative depictions of music and myth, Josh Torabi challenges the common view that the latter half of The Birth of Tragedy is of secondary importance to the first. Informed by a deep knowledge of Nietzsche’s early aesthetics, the book goes on to offer a fresh and original perspective on Ulysses and Doctor Faustus, two world-famous novels that are rarely discussed together, and makes the case for the significance of Jean-Christophe, which has been unfairly neglected in the Anglophone world, despite Rolland’s status as a major figure in twentieth-century intellectual and literary history. This unique study reveals new depths to the work of our most enduring writers and thinkers.
A highly entertaining novel set in North London, where the Greek gods have been living in obscurity since the seventeenth century. Being immortal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Life’s hard for a Greek god in the twenty-first century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn’t respect you, and you’re stuck in a dilapidated hovel in North London with too many siblings and not enough hot water. But for Artemis (goddess of hunting, professional dog walker), Aphrodite (goddess of beauty, telephone sex operator) and Apollo (god of the sun, TV psychic) there’s no way out... until a meek cleaner and her would-be boyfriend come into their lives and turn the world upside down. Gods Behaving Badly is that rare thing, a charming, funny, utterly original novel that satisfies the head and the heart.
In this modern-day "lively re-imagining of classical mythology" (Deborah Harkness), when a string of women are murdered in an ancient pagan ritual, Selene DiSilvia -- known by some as the goddess Artemis -- hears their cries for help and takes up her bow once more. Manhattan has many secrets. Some are older than the city itself. The city sleeps. In the predawn calm, Selene DiSilva finds the body of a young woman washed ashore, gruesomely mutilated and wreathed in laurel. Her ancient rage returns, along with the memory of a promise she made long ago -- when her name was Artemis. Jordanna Max Brodsky's acclaimed debut sets Greek Gods against a modern Manhattan backdrop, creating an unputdownable blend of myth and mystery.
J. J. White reexamines the use of myth in fiction in order to bring a new terminological precision into the field. While concentrating on the German novel (Mann, Broch, and Nossack), he discusses the work of Alberto Moravia, John Bowen, Michel Butor, and Macdonald Harris as well, in order to show the modern predilection for myth in whatever national literature. Throughout his discussion, Mr. White delineates carefully his specific subject: the novel in which mythological motifs are used to prefigure events and character—Joyce's Ulysses is, of course, the archetypal novel in this tradition. Setting forth his terms, and making clear his use of them, Mr. White then analyzes the wide appeal of the mythological novel for both twentieth-century novelists and critics: he distinguishes four ways in which modern novelists use myth and surveys the range of critical literature on the subject. His concluding chapters are discussions of specific texts in which he differentiates between novels which have a unilinear parallel between myth and plot, novels of "juxtaposition" in which chapters retelling myth parallel modern action, and novels of fusion in which the action of the modern account synthesizes more than one mythic prefiguration of mythological motif. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Reinvigorates modernist analysis of myth in Virginia Woolf's fiction by illuminating Woolf's use of parataxis to engage both myth and contemporary social and political issues.
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A bighearted novel with technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot in which marriages struggle, rivalries flare, and secrets explode, all with a clever wink toward classical mythology. For fans of Madeline Miller's Circe: "The Iliad meets Friday Night Lights in this muscular, captivating debut" (Oprah Daily). The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down. An expansive tour de force, Olympus, Texas cleverly weaves elements of classical mythology into a thoroughly modern family saga, rich in drama and psychological complexity. After all, at some point, don't we all wonder: What good is this destructive force we call love?
The story of Atlas and Heracles Atlas knows how it feels to carry the weight of the world; but why, he asks himself, does it have to be carried at all? In Weight — visionary and inventive, yet completely believable and relevant to the questions we ask ourselves every day — Winterson’s skill in turning the familiar on its head to show us a different truth is put to stunning effect. When I was asked to choose a myth to write about, I realized I had chosen already. The story of Atlas holding up the world was in my mind before the telephone call had ended. If the call had not come, perhaps I would never have written the story, but when the call did come, that story was waiting to be written. Rewritten. The recurring language motif of Weight is “I want to tell the story again.” My work is full of Cover Versions. I like to take stories we think we know and record them differently. In the retelling comes a new emphasis or bias, and the new arrangement of the key elements demands that fresh material be injected into the existing text. Weight moves far away from the simple story of Atlas’s punishment and his temporary relief when Hercules takes the world off his shoulders. I wanted to explore loneliness, isolation, responsibility, burden, and freedom too, because my version has a very particular end not found elsewhere. —from Jeanette Winterson’s Foreword to Weight