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Examining a range of contemporary fictional works that adapt Greco-Roman myths of the descent into the underworld, from novels and comics to children's culture, this volume reveals the ways in which the catabasis narrative can be manipulated by storytellers to reflect upon postmodern culture, feminist critiques, and postcolonial appropriations.
Myths of the Underworld in Contemporary Culture: The Backward Gaze examines a series of twentieth and twenty-first century fictional works that adapt Greco-Roman myths of the catabasis, the heroic journey to the underworld. Covering a range of genres - including novels, comics, and children's culture, by authors such as Elena Ferrante, Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, A. S. Byatt, Toni Morrison, and Anne Patchett - it reveals how an enduring fascination with life after death, and fantasies of accessing the world of the dead while we are still alive, manifest themselves in myriad and varied re-imaginings of the ancient descent myth. The volume begins with a detailed overview of the use of the myth by ancient authors such as Homer, Aristophanes, Vergil, and Ovid, before exploring the ways in which the narrative of a return trip to Hades by Odysseus, Aeneas, Orpheus, and Persephone can be manipulated by contemporary storytellers to fit themes of social marginality and alterity, postmodern rebellion, the position of female authors in the literary canon, and the dislocation endured by refugees, exiles, and diasporic populations. It also argues that citations of classical underworld stories can disrupt and challenge the literary canon by using media - such as comic books, children's culture, or rock music - not conventionally associated with high culture.
Thomas Pynchon and the Postmodern Mythology of the Underworld is devoted to the work of one of the most highly acclaimed writers of the post-World War II period of American literature, Thomas Pynchon. Through close readings and broad amplification, this book illustrates that the descent to the underworld is the single most important myth in Pynchon's work, conferring shape and significance upon each of his novels. This book also offers a unique perspective on postmodernism, which is characterized by ludic syncretism - the playful synthesis of myths from a variety of cultures. In addition, Thomas Pynchon and the Postmodern Mythology of the Underworld is a major contribution to the study of myth and literature as a whole, through the definition of what Evans Lansing Smith calls necrotypes - archetypal images catalyzed by the mythology of the underworld. This book employs an interdisciplinary methodology that will be of critical interest to scholars of comparative literature, mythology, and religion; to theorists and critics of modernism and postmodernism; to depth psychologists in the traditions of Jung, Freud, and James Hillman; as well as to the broad base of Pynchon enthusiasts and exponents of popular culture.
Monumental epic poem tells the heroic story of Aeneas, a Trojan who escaped the burning ruins of Troy to found Lavinium, the parent city of Rome, in the west.
This unique approach to the Iliad and the Odyssey explores the role and function of Hades as a poetic environment in which traditional exposition of heroic values may be subverted in favour of a more personally inflected approach to the epic past, giving rise to a different kind of poetics: the 'poetics of Hades'.
Professor Roger Woodard brings together a group of the world's most authoritative scholars of classical myth to present a thorough treatment of all aspects of Greek mythology. Sixteen original articles guide the reader through all aspects of the ancient mythic tradition and its influence around the world and in later years. The articles examine the forms and uses of myth in Greek oral and written literature, from the epic poetry of 8th century BC to the mythographic catalogues of the early centuries AD. They examine the relationship between myth, art, religion and politics among the ancient Greeks and its reception and influence on later society from the Middle Ages to present day literature, feminism and cinema. This Companion volume's comprehensive coverage makes it ideal reading for students of Greek mythology and for anyone interested in the myths of the ancient Greeks and their impact on western tradition.
What are myths? How have they evolved? And why do we still so desperately need them? A history of myth is a history of humanity, Karen Armstrong argues in this insightful and eloquent book: our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors and each other. This is a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense–from Palaeolithic times to the “Great Western Transformation” of the last 500 years–and why we dismiss it only at our peril.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo has dazzled and challenged audiences with its unique aesthetic design and startling plot devices since its release in 1958. In Classical Vertigo: Mythic Shapes and Contemporary Influences in Hitchcock’s Film, Mark William Padilla analyzes antecedents including: (1) the film’s source novel, D’entre les morts (Among the Dead), (2) the earlier symbolist novel, Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-morte, and (3) the first-draft screenplay of Maxwell Anderson, a prominent Broadway dramatist and Hollywood scenarist from the 1920s to the 1950s. The presence of Vertigo amid these texts reveals and clarifies how themes from Greco-Roman antiquity emerge in Hitchcock’s project. Padilla analyzes narrative figures such as Prometheus and Pandora, Persephone and Hades, and Pygmalion and Galatea, as well as themes like the dark plots of Greek tragedy, to reveal how Hitchcock used allusive form to construct an emotionally powerful experience with an often-minimalist script. This analysis demonstrates that Vertigo is a multifaceted work of intertextuality with artistic and cultural roots extending into antiquity itself.
"This new edition of MYTHOLOGIES is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic, Roland Barthes's most emblematic work"--
Dream Tonight of Peacock Tails marks the first in-depth examination of Pynchon’s debut novel, which was immediately recognized as a breakthrough masterpiece. The eight essays collected in the volume provide both scholars and avid readers with new and original insights into a too-often underestimated work that, probably even more than Gravity’s Rainbow, established Pynchon as one of the great masters of twentieth-century American literature. This book deliberately privileges a multidisciplinary and transnational approach, encompassing collaborations from a particularly international and diverse academic context. As such, this volume offers a multifaceted pattern of expanding investigation that tackles the novel’s apparently chaotic but meticulously organized structure by rereading it in the light of recent US and European history and economics, as well as by exploring its many real and imagined locations. Not only are the essays brought together here revelatory of Pynchon’s way of working, but they also tell us something about our own ways of approaching his fiction.