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Van Gogh is a character that appears in a verse drama entitled The Yellow Chair, a story within a story, in A. S. Byatt's Still Life, the second novel of the Frederica Potter Quartet. In this novel, both Van Gogh's paintings and a major life event – his agon with the French artist Paul Gauguin in Arles – are represented on stage. This paper argues that Van Gogh's self-mutilation is a mimesis of the various facets of the myth of the sun depicted in his numerous paintings (i.e. the life and death of vegetation in nature, the rising and setting of the sun in the sky, and the division of the white sunlight into both complementary and spectrum colors). The myths of fertility incorporated in Van Gogh's narrative in the novel epitomize the main character Frederica Potter's erotic experiences, who, as a Cambridge undergraduate, believes that the body is the ultimate source of all good in the world and that "marriage [is] the end of every good story."1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914 has been described as the ‘most powerful German myth’ of the First World War. This essay analyses the role of the battle in German collective memory up to the end of the Third Reich. During the war, the victory in East Prussia was celebrated widely and greatly contributed to the personality cult surrounding Paul von Hindenburg. After 1918, Tannenberg served right-wing circles as a political argument against the post-war order, evoked to underscore the notion of German victimhood against Slav ‘encirclement’, the ‘war guilt lie’ and the territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. However, it never really captured the attention or imagination of writers and artists. Linked primarily to national-conservative groups and ideals, Tannenberg was also of no major significance in National Socialist propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imaginative narratives that myths provide have a significant place in mental life. Myths continue to be handed down from one generation to the next because they resonate with our unconscious hopes, desires, fantasies, and fears. This paper discusses the Medusa myth. The discourse deals with the cultural context of its time, which implicates the political, social, and especially the gender differences that existed in classical Greece. This myth had an emotional impact on men and women but undoubtedly each group responded in their own particular way. The emphasis in this paper is on the possible effect of this myth on the sexes in ancient times and especially the meanings it may have had for women then and now. Although destructive rage and vengefulness is part of the story, in addition, I focus on the importance of sexuality, power, mastery, and freedom that the myth may offer to oppressed women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on an interview with writer Marina Gersoni Jarre, which was conducted on February 17, 2008. According to Jarre, she opposes myths and generalizations in her literary writings. The four stories in the book "Galambra," were described by Jarre as "storie di fantasmi." For her latest project, Jarre is focusing on Waldensian history.

The article discusses literary adaptations of the legend of Pocahontas to books such as "Ivanhoe" by Water Scott and "Hope Leslie" by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. The author reflects on aspects of the Pocahontas legend which include myth, culture, romanticism, colonialism, and historical events. The article analyzes an eastward transatlantic influence and intertextual cultural relations. Other topics include narratives of intermarriage, heroic women in literature, and gender and sexuality as metaphors for national, religious, and racial differences.

The author reflects on the initiative of demythologizing science teacher education concerning the myth of open inquiry. He primarily regards on the impact of myths in the teaching effectivity of science teachers, regarding the fallacy of open inquiry as an ideal form of classroom inquiry for science teaching. He further calls the attention of science educators on the false ideal about open inquiry. Further details supporting his convection about the false ideals of open inquiry are included.

This contribution consists of an annotated excerpt from A. N. Tolstoi's ocherk 'Orfei v adu', in English translation, preceded by a commentary, which outlines the Australian context and provides background on the captain of the MV Smol'ny, with whom Tolstoi sailed to Hamburg and London in 1935. Captain Zuzenko had made his name as a revolutionary in Queensland (1911–22) and twice been deported to Soviet Russia. Zuzenko's views on Australia and the Anglo-Saxon working classes are examined and compared with those in other sources on or by Zuzenko. These sources include his reports to the Executive of the Communist International (1920–23), Australian and British intelligence reports (1918–25), his press articles published in Australia, the USSR and the USA, and in particular a story by him found in the Poole–Fried Collection in the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the tensions present in the recovery and reception of Spanish Republican exile theatre through close consideration of the work of an emblematic author, José Bergamín. The gap between categorical and embodied knowledge of exile theatre texts and phenomena is shown to underpin a tendency to mythologize the process of remembering an absent part of Spanish theatrical tradition. By addressing the problems encountered in representing and staging one particular play, Medea la encantadora, these tensions are both exemplified and elucidated through engagement with the dialectical relationship between myth and memory presented in the dramatic text itself. Thus, it is proposed that enactive engagement with the play provides an unsettling insight into the problematic representational status of exile theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that the Deuteronomic‐1 legend of the book of Joshua was formed into its mythical cyclical form through a process of oral transmission. As the oral stories told about an original source event were transformed into a community story it began to take on a liturgical form. This article explains the neuropsychological aspects of this natural process and also highlights how the cultural shift in the 12th century B.C.E. preserved the form of the Deuteronomic‐1 legend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ruptures of the social fabrics accompany China's rapid pace of development and its integration into the global market, severing the connection between cultural memory and history. Increasingly abstracted into economic, administrative, and exchange processes, the matrix of meaning and values that used to connect individuals to society and the past to the present has lost its self-evidence and cohesive power. In the emergent society of consumption and mass media the older Marxian notion of history as social and political practice is receding from public purview and China's past is being dissolved into spectacles. The 1980s critique of the grand narrative was taken over by the liberal-consumerist erasure of history under the spell of global capital. Cultural production has exhibited a downturn to the immediate and the everyday, to consumptive practices and frivolous pleasure. In opposition to this there arose a striving for renewed engagement with history, an intensified attempt to seek possibilities in the past for understanding and responding to swift changes. Wang Anyi's fiction epitomizes a serious engagement with history. This essay focuses on the mythical motif in Wang's fiction that draws on memory, associated with legend, folklore, and tradition, to critique the accelerative thrust of modern history. The novel Reality and Fiction (Jishi yu xugou) represents a poignant attempt to invoke a primordial history steeped in myth. The short story 'Marriage of the Fairies' ('Tianxian pei') illustrates the way memory can be a strong resource that binds a group into a community under the exigency of change as well as a critique of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes Russian philosopher Alexei Fedorovich Losev's conception of myth in his book 'The Dialectic of Myth.' Influence of the traditions of Russian culture on Losev's personality and works and intellectual and moral foundation; Losev's adoption of the phenomenological, Husserlian treatment of the philosophical object; Outline of Losev's treatment of symbol; Conception of myth; Different interpretations of myth based on Losev's dialectical thinking.

Examines how several authors define mythopoesis. Harry Slochower; Joseph Campbell; Laurence Coupe.

Presents the author's views on Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, a Russian poet. View that Pushkin studies before twentieth century tended ineluctably towards a kind of free-ranging mythopoesis; Fact that in the 1920s, Pushkin studies entered into competition with the Pushkin myth; Report that in early twentieth-century Pushkin studies began,with desanctifying and demythologizing the image of Pushkin.

This article presents a literary criticism for the book "La agonía de Proserpina," by Javier Tomeo. The author examines Tomeo's role as the creator of the work, which includes elements of metafiction, myth, and existentialism. A description of the main characters of the novel, Juan and Anita, is also provided.

Examines the revisionist mythmaking strategies employed by lesbian-feminist writers of color Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua, and Audre Lorde. Challenging of the cultural stereotypes that silence women of color by denying their access to language; Destabilization of monolithic definitions of female identity; Critique of western culture's binary structures.

Discusses the use of myth in American fictionist Pat Conroy's 1976 novel 'The Great Santini'. Stripping away of myth in order for main characters to approach reality with maturity and objectivity; Main characters Bull and Lilliam Meecham; Concretization of religious analogies.

Points out that 'Central Europe' is a journal of ideas, primarily concerned with political, intellectual, cultural and social history. Extension of the definition of Central Europe to include all Poland and the Baltic states; Studies of mythopoeia, both medieval and modern; Studies of foreign perceptions of the region; Impact of culture on language; Fluidity of the region's boundaries which at different times embraced much of northern Italy, the entirety of the German-speaking lands, southeastern England and the Ile de France.

Examines the development of muth and fantasy in German literature.