Classical Myth and Margaret Mahy's Young Adult Fiction

<p>This thesis investigates the importance of classical myth in the young adult fiction of Margaret Mahy. Mahy's novels are full of references to classical myths, both direct and indirect, in names of characters like Dido, Ovid, Ariadne or Hero; in storylines such as Flora's journey to the Underworld-like Viridian to rescue her cousin Anthea, strongly reminiscent of Demeter's rescue of Persephone from Hades, which take their inspiration from classical myth; in seemingly incidental references like the persistent comparisons of Sorry to Charon, the classical ferryman of the dead, in The Changeover. These references point to a deep engagement with the heritage of classical myth. It is an engagement that has not gone unnoticed by scholars of Mahy's work, but it is one that has not enjoyed the dedicated critical attention it deserves. This thesis explores the full importance of classical myth to Mahy's young adult fiction, and shows how an understanding of the classical background of a large selection of Mahy's major novels can both enhance our appreciation of what is already there, as well as open up new avenues for critical engagement with her work.</p>

Classical Myth and Margaret Mahy's Young Adult Fiction

<p>This thesis investigates the importance of classical myth in the young adult fiction of Margaret Mahy. Mahy's novels are full of references to classical myths, both direct and indirect, in names of characters like Dido, Ovid, Ariadne or Hero; in storylines such as Flora's journey to the Underworld-like Viridian to rescue her cousin Anthea, strongly reminiscent of Demeter's rescue of Persephone from Hades, which take their inspiration from classical myth; in seemingly incidental references like the persistent comparisons of Sorry to Charon, the classical ferryman of the dead, in The Changeover. These references point to a deep engagement with the heritage of classical myth. It is an engagement that has not gone unnoticed by scholars of Mahy's work, but it is one that has not enjoyed the dedicated critical attention it deserves. This thesis explores the full importance of classical myth to Mahy's young adult fiction, and shows how an understanding of the classical background of a large selection of Mahy's major novels can both enhance our appreciation of what is already there, as well as open up new avenues for critical engagement with her work.</p>

MEDIA MYTHS ABOUT KALEVALA AND REALITY: A CULTURAL APPROACH

The article deals with the problem of the truth of modern media myths using specific information materials about Kalevala, the homeland of classical Karelian mythology. The study was conducted in two stages: the empirical stage was carried out during a comprehensive research expedition of the Humanitarian Innovation Park of Petrozavodsk State University to the Kalevala National District of Karelia, while the second stage was implemented during the office processing of the collected data. Sociological survey and in-depth interview, as well as the analysis and comparison of media myths and classical myths were used as research methods. The second stage of the study led to some generalizations and conclusions. As a result of the study, essential functions performed by media myths in modern culture were identified; six media myths about Kalevala were verified; each myth’s content and its reflection in reality were analyzed. Special attention was paid to the transformation of the classical Karelian myth of Sampo into a modern media myth verified in this study. All in all, the article presents conclusions about the conformity of modern media myths with the provisions of Aleksey Losev’s mythological theory and summarizes the cultural and creative function of modern media mythology.

“The fair draught of Óðinn”

Icelandic poets in the 16th and 17th century had great interest in formal features such as rhyme, kennings, and periphrasis. Rímur poets made use of Eddic diction and imagery but the use of kennings was not limited to rímur; it can also be found in other kinds of poetry. Baroque delight in periphrasis and metrical complexity ensured a favorable reception for the renewed interest in dróttkvætt measure, with its aurally intriguing rhymes and complex kennings. The paper discusses the use of kennings and the connection between kennings, riddles and metaphors and also between kennings and Eddic and classical myths.

The Mutilated Text

This chapter explores the history and affordances of personifying unfinished or materially altered books as violated and dismembered human beings. While medieval book catalogs sometimes alerted readers to books with partial contents, early Italian humanists such as Francesco Petrarca, Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, and Angelo Poliziano forged a new language for textual loss, using metaphors of mutilation to register their grief and to announce their project of cultural repair. Appropriating classical myths of dispersal and reassembly to lament damage done by the ravages of time, humanists cast the scholar-critic in the redemptive role of physician and healer, inventing in turn some the tropes for thinking about lost texts that textual critics still use today. If humanists shifted the language of mutilation from the book’s integrity to the text’s correctness, what poetic language do we use to register and experience textual loss in the digital age?

Thomas More's Historical Legacy: The Tudor Tragedies of King Richard III

Thomas More's History of Richard III is a metahistory, rich in factual and fictional details. I will discuss More's concept of historiography as a rhetorical art and how his presentation of history transformed details of what was imperfectly known about Richard III into a polemic about what should be believed as an irrefutable truth. More's conception of history is much more amorphous than modern theories. He incorporated classical myths, literature, history, and philosophy along with phantasies, dreams, and oral testimonies to recreate his historical Richard III as a tragic figure. More saw patterns of immoral behavior deeply rooted in the histories of the Plantagenet kings from the twelfth century to 1485 as if the sins of the fathers are repeated by their children. More used his sources, the antiquarian John Rous, the historian Polydore Vergil, and the oral history of Archbishop/Cardinal John Morton to prove that the immorality of the Plantagenets, embodied in Richard III, was a curse that will be purged from England by the ascendance of Henry VII. William Shakespeare copied and embellished More's tragic vision of Richard III. Their historical facts and fictions enhanced their moral signification of the rise and fall of Richard III in English history.

Tematizaciones en Áyax y Casandra, de Reinaldo Montero

ResumenEsta investigación tiene como objetivo analizar el modo en que el dramaturgo cubano Reinaldo Montero dialoga con los temas clásicos en su obra Áyax y Casandra. Para ello, se examina, en primer lugar, cómo se configuraron los personajes en textos precedentes, lo cual permite conocer qué elementos retoma Montero y por qué lo hace, así como determinar sus innovaciones y en función de qué nuevo mensaje las coloca. Montero no sólo utiliza mitos y obras clásicas para reflexionar sobre problemas actuales, sino que también convierte su texto, al entrecruzar tantas huellas de fuentes diversas, en un extenso discurso sobre la pervivencia clásica.The Themes in Áyax y Casandra, by Reinaldo MonteroAbstractThis article aims to analyze how Cuban playwright Reinaldo Montero engages with classical themes in his play Áyax y Casandra. The characters’ development from ancient Greek theatre is discussed, in order to understand what new dimensions are added by Montero, and what is the message Áyax y Casandra may bring today. Montero not only uses classical myths and plays to reflect on current issues but, in bringing together the traces from diverse sources, transforms his play in an extensive argument about the continuing relevance of classical myths.Recibido: 30 de septiembre 2019 Aceptado: 19 de febrero de 2020

Medieval Latin Commentaries on Classical Myth

As the abundance of extant medieval commentaries attests, classical mythology presented several conundrums for medieval audiences. The historical distance between the writers of classical myths and their medieval readers prompted numerous scholars to reframe and even rewrite their sources to ameliorate challenges ranging from complicated classical Latin syntax to theological conflicts between pagan polytheism and Christian monotheism. Despite its polytheism, classical mythology became a source for manifold medieval erudition, beginning with the grammatical studies that introduced students to Latin literacy. Scholars and writers since the beginning of the Christian Middle Ages turned to these myths to gain mastery over Latin, history, natural science, and even ethics. To study these subjects, medieval scholars produced collections of scholastic notes, or commentaries, primarily in Latin. The medieval commentary tradition began in classical antiquity itself. Soon after Virgil wrote his Aeneid, scholars started developing commentaries that prompted audiences both to study and to imitate his works. The Middle Ages inherited some of these commentaries, such as the influential commentaries by Servius on Virgil, which then influenced commentaries on other classical writers of myths, such as Ovid and Statius. The modern study of these diverse medieval materials has recently benefited from the increased availability of digital manuscripts, critical editions, and a few translations, all of which have facilitated more cross-commentary analyses than used to be possible. However, the wide range of interpretive approaches and formats as well as the irregularities of medieval scholastic transmission mean that much more work remains to be done on how medieval audiences accessed classical mythology. This article combines older foundational studies with more recent contributions to represent how modern criticism, like the commentaries it studies, takes many forms.

Trazas del mito y la tradición clásica en la cantiga profana gallego-portuguesa

This article goes through some of the coincidences between the classical literary tradition and the Galician-Portuguese lyric, which provide sometimes a new signification to the Greco-Roman mythical tradition. In this sense, certain classical myths are reworked from a moral perspective. Additionally, the resource to erotic topics from the Greco-Roman tradition in the Galician-Portuguese love lyric is exemplified, such as the love at first sight, the madness of love, the judgment loss, the evasive lover, irrisor amoris and servitium amoris

‘A word will set the seed / of life and death’: Robin Robertson’s Protean Lyric

The chapter discusses Robin Robertson’s poetry, stretched between the existential and the material, oscillating around edges, junctures and transitions. Focusing on legends and folk tales that are forged in the Scottish landscape, Robertson, for whom the sense of place is ‘absolutely crucial’, combines them with classical myths. The analysis centres around Robertson’s preoccupation with these themes, arguing that the inherent order of the world as evoked in his poems is governed by chaos and change. In various forms of being volatility dominates, occurring in transfigurations of the material world, standing against the claims about the inertness of matter. Vitality connects with epidermal vulnerability revealed in the poems’ frequent focus on metamorphosis. The apprehension of the temporality of the body is captured in Robertson’s enfolding of the subject into the seasonal cycle. The chapter thus investigates the corporeal drive as co-temporal with the rhythms of the non-human world.