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Heroic Transformations in the Classical World

David Brown

in Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change

The first part of the chapter examines the nature of Greek religion, and argues that it should be treated seriously as a religion, one which through changing versions of its myths sought to ... More

The first part of the chapter examines the nature of Greek religion, and argues that it should be treated seriously as a religion, one which through changing versions of its myths sought to conceptualise personal or societal changes in perceptions of how the divine was understood. Differing treatments of Odysseus are then used to anticipate the discussion of Abraham in the chapter that follows; Iphigenia that of Isaac, and Helen and Ganymede that of Joseph. The way in which earlier Christian generations understood Greek myth as also revelatory is used to challenge the narrower view that is dominant today.Less

Introduction

Lowell Edmunds

in Stealing Helen: The Myth of the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective

This introductory chapter undertakes a comparison between a folktale and a Greek myth. It attempts to define the folktale through two avenues concerning genre and terminology as well as mode of ... More

This introductory chapter undertakes a comparison between a folktale and a Greek myth. It attempts to define the folktale through two avenues concerning genre and terminology as well as mode of communication. Here, the chapter relates the folktale of “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife” to the Greek epics such as the Iliad, eventually focusing the discussion on the story of Helen of Troy. To aid in the discussion, the chapter introduces the comparative circle, which begins from the perception of a similarity between the target text and some other text, and proceeds from this second text to a third and so forth, until the scholar constructing the circle decides to return to the explicandum.Less

How Superheroes Made Their Way into the World of Fairy Tales: The Appeal of Cooperation and Collective Action from the Greek Myths to the Grimms’ Tales and Beyond

Jack Zipes

in Grimm Legacies: The Magic Spell of the Grimms' Folk and Fairy Tales

This chapter highlights an important theme in the Grimms' fairy tales that few scholars have discussed—cooperation or superhuman cooperative efforts necessary to defeat evil. It shares a string of ... More

This chapter highlights an important theme in the Grimms' fairy tales that few scholars have discussed—cooperation or superhuman cooperative efforts necessary to defeat evil. It shares a string of associations about cooperation in fairy tales before explaining why a tale such as “How Six Made Their Way in the World” and other similar tales in the Grimms' Kinder-und Hausmärchen significantly touch on a relevant memetic topic that we can find in myths and folk and fairy tales throughout the world. The chapter explores the appeal of tales about superheroes and why we are all more or less attracted to them as they work together to help underdogs.Less

Palaephatus. Peri Apiston

Greta Hawes

in Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity

Palaephatus’ Peri Apiston is a key text for our understanding of ancient myth interpretation, but its usefulness has been largely overlooked in previous discussions. This chapter highlights the ... More

Palaephatus’ Peri Apiston is a key text for our understanding of ancient myth interpretation, but its usefulness has been largely overlooked in previous discussions. This chapter highlights the unusual qualities of this work – its philosophically dense preface, repetitious style, hermeneutic consistency, and canonical sense of ‘myth’, and looks in detail at the mechanics of this kind of interpretation and its concern with misunderstood language. It argues that, in spite of his uniqueness, Palaephatus is nonetheless a product of his time and his text reflects a number of issues current in highly-literate circles in Athens in the late fourth century, including the application of Aristotelian biological principles, a changing concept of myth, the replacement of localized stories with literary ones, and attempts to categorize stories according to various standards of plausibility.Less

Variations on the Theme of a Painting by Poussin

Claude Lévi-Strauss

in We Are All Cannibals: And Other Essays

myths of the echo in Europe and the Americas

Introduction

Greta Hawes

in Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity

This chapter describes the nature of ancient rationalistic approaches and the general tenor of the ancient tradition. It examines the origins of rationalistic interpretation in early historiography ... More

This chapter describes the nature of ancient rationalistic approaches and the general tenor of the ancient tradition. It examines the origins of rationalistic interpretation in early historiography through passages from Hecataeus, Herodotus and Herodorus, and then examines its conceptual limits via excerpts from Plato’s Phaedrus and Euripides’ Bacchae in which its use is criticized and even lampooned. Rationalization is not merely an interpretative mode, but a form of storytelling guided by a particular, contextual understanding of plausibility. In this way, it is underscored by both the principles of historiographical verisimilitude, and also the practices of active mythmaking, which means that it has much in common with the more conventional elements of Greek myth. The chapter ends with a discussion of the place of rationalization within the context of ancient hermeneutic practices, and its relationship to allegory and Euhemerism in particular.Less

Pausanias. Periegesis

Greta Hawes

in Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity

Pausanias’ travel guide is a complex, eclectic text which exhibits a number of approaches to myth. This chapter argues that Paul Veyne’s conception of Pausanias’ style as a narrator and critic of ... More

Pausanias’ travel guide is a complex, eclectic text which exhibits a number of approaches to myth. This chapter argues that Paul Veyne’s conception of Pausanias’ style as a narrator and critic of myth is too narrowly-conceived. It shows that Pausanias presents rationalistic readings of his material in various ways and in response to particular narrative and geographical contexts, and that his ‘habits’ are broadly in keeping with those apparent elsewhere in the ancient tradition. It discusses the ways in which he makes use of rationalistic approaches in relation to geographical anomalies, stories of metamorphosis, the work of Daedalus, and the myths of Crete.Less

Ovid's Liberalia

John F. Miller

in Ovid's Fasti: Historical Readings at its Bimillennium

This chapter offers an explication of the feast in honour of Liber (F. 3. 713-90) in the light of a) the interplay of Greek myth and Roman cult; b) the mixing of presentational modes (didactic, ... More

This chapter offers an explication of the feast in honour of Liber (F. 3. 713-90) in the light of a) the interplay of Greek myth and Roman cult; b) the mixing of presentational modes (didactic, hymnic, narrative, aetiological); c) generic self-consciousness (how Ovid meets the challenge of narrative in the elegiac meter); d) how Ovid imagines the details of the festival against the background of what we know of the Liberalia from elsewhere (the inscribed calendars, Varro, Macrobius, Augustine, and others).Less

The Cronus Complex: Psychoanalytic Myths of the Future for Boys and Girls

RACHEL BOWLBY

in Freudian Mythologies: Greek Tragedy and Modern Identities

This chapter uses the myth of Cronus — Zeus's father — to think about the genealogies through which Freud imagines possible futures for male and female subjects. Lying behind the phrase ‘castration ... More

This chapter uses the myth of Cronus — Zeus's father — to think about the genealogies through which Freud imagines possible futures for male and female subjects. Lying behind the phrase ‘castration complex’ is a story as potent in its way as the Oedipus story that subtends the Oedipus complex; but Cronus — who castrated his own father — surfaces only rarely in Freud's writing (or in popular mythological knowledge). Cronus is associated with a much more brutal, pre-human (pre-Oedipal) phase of mythic history, before the arrival of the Olympian gods. Freud's own mythology in effect involves a boy's passage, via the Oedipus and castration complexes, from primitive to civilized subjectivity. Women, on the other hand, are stuck in a pre-civilized world (where they are already ‘castrated’ and find a subjective future only in having a (boy) baby can represent what they must imagine they have been deprived of.Less

From Myth to Logos in Greek Studies

Adam Lee

in The Platonism of Walter Pater: Embodied Equity

This chapter analyses Pater’s understanding of myth and its creation in his Greek Studies (1895). Although the book was published posthumously, the majority of its essays appeared within a five-year ... More

This chapter analyses Pater’s understanding of myth and its creation in his Greek Studies (1895). Although the book was published posthumously, the majority of its essays appeared within a five-year period, beginning in 1876 with ‘The Myth of Demeter and Persephone’ and ‘A Study of Dionysus’. Pater follows a three-stage mythopoeic process, beginning with the myths of the people, which are collected and organized by the poets, and finally sculpted into ethical archetypes, conveying the development from myth to logos. Apollo comes to exemplify the archetypal character for Pater, influenced by Plato’s reverence for the god as the embodiment of reason, light, sanity, and music. Around the time of these first studies on myth, in their account of how traditional stories are created and characters are formed, Pater first turns his hand to publishing fiction.Less

“Steeped in Greek Mythology”: The First Half of the Twentieth Century

Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts

in Childhood and the Classics: Britain and America, 1850-1965

This chapter surveys myth retellings for children in the first half of the twentieth century, mostly in anthologies but also in other fictional forms in which modern children interact with figures ... More

This chapter surveys myth retellings for children in the first half of the twentieth century, mostly in anthologies but also in other fictional forms in which modern children interact with figures from classical myth. Key developments include the impact of anthropology and folklore studies, the emergence of the United States as a center of children’s publishing after World War I, questions about the relevance of myth to American children, the assimilation of myths to fables and tall tales, innovative approaches to illustration, and mid-century nostalgia for earlier myth books. Among the authors discussed are Andrew Lang, Padraic Colum, James Daugherty, Robert McCloskey, Edith Hamilton, Roger Lancelyn Green, and Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire.Less

Introduction: The Power of Stories

Emily Katz Anhalt

in Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths

This book examines three ancient Greek myths—Homer's Iliad, Euripides' Hecuba, and Sophocles' Ajax—to illustrate the costs of rage and identify crucial prerequisites for the nonviolent resolution of ... More

This book examines three ancient Greek myths—Homer's Iliad, Euripides' Hecuba, and Sophocles' Ajax—to illustrate the costs of rage and identify crucial prerequisites for the nonviolent resolution of conflicts. Performed publicly as epic songs or tragic plays, ancient Greek myths expose tyranny and violence as universal toxins capable of destroying both perpetrator and victim. They emphasize the self-destructiveness of rage and undermine the traditional equation of vengeance with justice, but they also remind their audiences that human beings have better options for dealing with one another. The book analyzes the critique of rage in Iliad, which addresses the misuse of power and questions the utility of vengeance, and Hecuba and Ajax, both of which commend verbal persuasion over physical violence but also underscore the ambivalent potential of persuasive speech.Less

The Myth of Demeter and Persephone

Leonard Shengold

in Haunted by Parents

This chapter focuses on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, which alludes to the change of seasons and exemplifies the link between change and expectation of loss. It emphasizes the myth's ... More

This chapter focuses on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, which alludes to the change of seasons and exemplifies the link between change and expectation of loss. It emphasizes the myth's psychological origin in the developmental separation from mother.Less

Scholarly Mythopoesis: Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths

Vanda Zajko

in Robert Graves and the Classical Tradition

This chapter presents a fresh perspective on Graves’s The Greek Myths, which in its presentation of Greek myth aims to serve as both a work of reference and literature. This ambiguity, coupled with ... More

This chapter presents a fresh perspective on Graves’s The Greek Myths, which in its presentation of Greek myth aims to serve as both a work of reference and literature. This ambiguity, coupled with inconsistencies in his use of sources and his creative imagination, created a tense relationship between the academy and Graves. Graves’s methodology combined compilation, organization, and interpretation to produce a corrective to previous scholarship. He wanted to establish a historical and archaeological basis of Greek mythology and reorient it at the centre of the study of early European history. The White Goddess conveys Graves’s idea of a ‘universal pre-history of humankind’, and takes an anthropological approach where myths are evidence of historical events which can be demonstrated once they are interpreted. Myths were puzzles to be solved which required linguistic skills to unlock the ‘prehistoric mentalité’, and he believed in iconotropy, where mythographers’ misinterpretations distorted matters—it would be Graves who would correct these distortions.Less

Introduction 1

Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos

in Ancient Greek Women in Film

This introductory chapter first presents the theoretical and methodological approaches used in the book as a whole and then provides an overview of the chapters in order to illustrate the ... More

This introductory chapter first presents the theoretical and methodological approaches used in the book as a whole and then provides an overview of the chapters in order to illustrate the contributions of the collection — the first few that are entirely devoted to the study of ancient Greek women on screen — to two major interdisciplinary areas: classical reception studies and gender studies. It then argues that an exploration of the diverse ways in which the women of Greek myth and history have been resurrected, used, and abused on film leads to conclusions important for classicists and cultural historians alike. Filmic recreations of classical antiquity are not neutral. They are deeply implicated in contemporary aesthetic, socio-moral, and political discourses, and employ the past as a vehicle whereby to touch upon prevailing ideas about sexuality, the position of women in modern societies, family, social structures, ethnicity, war, religion, and the cinema itself.Less

Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths and Matriarchy

Sibylle Ihm

in Robert Graves and the Classical Tradition

The chapter discusses Robert Graves’s book The Greek Myths and his approach to Greek religion. In Graves’s opinion, all Greek myth deals with a universal female figure. She is seen as the goddess of ... More

The chapter discusses Robert Graves’s book The Greek Myths and his approach to Greek religion. In Graves’s opinion, all Greek myth deals with a universal female figure. She is seen as the goddess of a matriarchal cult, where all male figures are sacred kings. They are put to death after a brief reign. The essay analyses examples from the book and contrasts them with current and mainstream works on Greek religion and mythology. The essay explains Graves’s beliefs and interpretations, and considers the scientific discussion about matriarchy and gynaecocracy. Finally, it looks at modern feminist literature which is partly based on Graves’s beliefs.Less