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The aim of the book is to propose new interpretations of poets who are among the most valued and discussed in the British Enlightenment. In fulfilling its aim, the book covers English poetry—and intellectual history—from the Restoration to the later eighteenth century. It examines how the myth of the donna angelica (the angelic lady), ancient in origin but given its best-known form within the medieval literature of fin'amor, lives on beyond the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the Enlightenment. To be more precise, it studies how some major Augustan poets appropriate and recreate what, for convenience, can be called the donna angelica topos (or, the angelic lady motif). They do so for a great many reasons linked with quite diverse circumstances. Nevertheless, the myth's intellectual richness, emotional intensity, and inherent ambiguities mean that it offers each of them a powerful way for articulating, interpreting, exploring refractions of eros—whether singly or diversely directed, concerned with sexuality or spirituality, informing personal or public experience. The myth has as many faces, so to speak, as does desire; it is one and yet many. Thus, the book pursues a particular fable of eros that appears in a multiplicity of texts in a multiplicity of guises. It studies how some of the most interesting poets from Dryden to Crabbe bring the angelic lady motif into modernity.

First published in 1975, Myth and Literature considers three points at which the concept of myth has entered modern literary imagination: the use of myth – or atleast their understanding of myth -- as a creative opening by modern writers, its exploration by critics as an interpretive device, and the analogy between certain ‘sense-making'functions of ‘myth', ‘fiction'and literature itself. All three of these roles show the gradual movement from a point of precise demand to a diffuse and variable concept which is more pervasive because less distinct. The paradox of myth is shown to lie in its simultaneity of its corruption with the growth of its power over the modern literary mind. This book will be of interest to students of literature and history.

In this book, Nadia Salem examines and questions the enduring relevance of the monomyth, or the hero's journey, for storytellers and their audiences. Created by Joseph Campbell and largely popularized by George Lucas, the hero's journey has come to define mythic quests for all. However, in recent years, this genderless paradigm has lost its appeal as a repetitive Bildungsroman, and as a result, Salem argues for the inclusion of the heroine's journey as a Künstlerroman and a voice of alterity. Where the hero's journey reflects a coming of age, the heroine's journey reflects a coming of middle age, which are arguably equally necessary for the complete fulfillment of character. Taking a fresh look at the monomyth, Salem analyzes the narratives of Eros and Psyche, Jane Eyre, and Titanic to argue for an emphasis on the integration of both the hero's and the heroine's journeys. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how the monomyth as rebooted turns monomythic mythopoesis into fertile ground for the kinds of epiphanies demanded by transmodernism. Scholars of film studies, communication, composition, and mythology will find this book of particular interest.

The Mythic Indian: The Native in French and Québécois Cultural Imaginaries charts a genealogy of French and Québécois visions of the Amerindian. Tracing an evolution of paradigms from the sixteenth century to present, it examines how the myths of the Noble, Ignoble, and Ecological Savage as well as the Vanishing Indian and Going Native inform a variety of discourses and ways of thinking about Amerindian cultures. By analyzing mythic depictions of the Native Figure that originate at first contacts, this book demonstrates that an inextricable link exists between discourses as disparate as literature and science.This book will be of interest to scholars in French Studies, Francophone Studies, Indigenous Studies, Hemispheric Studies, Social Sciences, and Literary Studies.

Au croisement des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles se produit un bouleversement épistémologique avec la naissance du romantisme en Angleterre et en Allemagne. Les voix poétiques de Coleridge et de Novalis s'entrelacent avec celles de la philosophie transcendantale allemande. Elles s'inspirent également des traditions néo-platoniciennes et gnostiques. Le mythe émerge de ces confrontations. Dans ce contexte, l'objet de cette étude est de démontrer la place essentielle du mythe dans les réalisations poétiques des deux auteurs. Dans le dialogue entre la philosophie et la poésie, le mythe prend forme, conférant du sens aux textes et renouvelant la relation de l'homme avec la nature, qui regorge d'énergies et où les animaux, les plantes, les minéraux, sont dotés d'une âme. Au cœur de ces polarités et de cette dialectique alliant attraction et répulsion, le monde et les mots se métamorphosent en un flot continu. Le mythe y trouve un terrain fécond, participant à la structuration de l'espace et du temps. À cet égard, quatre axes mytho-poétiques ont été privilégiés dans cette étude des œuvres de Coleridge et de Novalis : les mythes de l'enfance, les harmonies opposées aux dissonances, la verticalité, horizontalité et l'inachèvement, qui regroupe les paradigmes des fragments, des ruines et du rêve.

Myth in the Modern Novel: Imagining the Absolute posits a twofold thesis. First, although Modernity is regarded as an era dominated by science and rational thought, it has in fact not relinquished the hold of myth, a more'primitive'form of thought which is difficult to reconcile with modern rationality. Second, some of the most important statements as to the reconcilability of myth and Modernity are found in the work of certain prominent novelists. This book offers a close examination of the work of eleven writers from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, representing German, French, American, Czech and Swedish literature. The analyses of individual novels reveal a variety of intriguing views of myth in Modernity, and offer an insight into the'modernizing'transformations myth has undergone when applied in the modern novel. The study shows the presence of the'subconscious', the mythic layer, in modern western culture and how this has been dealt with in novelistic literature.

Seamus Heaney's Mythmaking examines Seamus Heaney's poetic engagement with myth from his earliest work to the posthumous publication of Aeneid Book VI. The essays explore the ways in which Heaney creates his own mythic outlook through multiple mythic lenses. They reveal how Heaney adopts a demiurgic role throughout his career, creating a poetic universe that draws on diverse mythic cycles from Greco-Roman to Irish and Norse to Native American. In doing so, this collection is in dialogue with recent work on Heaney's engagement with myth. However, it is unique in its wide-ranging perspective, extending beyond Ancient and Classical influences.In its focus on Heaney's personal metamorphosis of several mythic cycles, this collection reveals more fully the poet's unique approach to mythmaking, from his engagement with the act of translation to transnational influences on his work and from his poetic transformations to the poetry's boundary-crossing transitions. Combining the work of established Heaney scholars with the perspectives of early-career researchers, this collection contains a wealth of original scholarship that reveals Heaney's expansive mythic mind. Mythmaking, an act for which Heaney has faced severe criticism, is reconsidered by all contributors, prompting multifaceted and nuanced readings of the poet's work.

This volume provides more sustained critical attention on the use of myth and fairy tales in contemporary fiction, both stand-alone tales and those which are embedded in the wider frame of a novel or novella. In this light, the book examines contemporary retellings of myths and fairy tales in a productive dialogue with tradition as an extended appreciation of this productive creative and theoretical dialogue. The individual chapters evince a robust variety of conceptions and approaches, all thoroughly observant of the nature and workings of the relationship between story and genre, and theoretically informed by innovative critical approaches. Hence, the volume demonstrates the undeniable importance of myth and fairy tales in contemporary fiction, suggesting questions for future consideration, and hopefully pointing towards new texts and new critical inquiries.

An ever-expanding critical library on fantasy fiction requires an analysis of why the genre is so ubiquitous, enduring and beloved. This work analyzes the mythic elements in foundational fantasy texts, arguing that mythopoeic fantasy reveals timeless truths that link human cultures past and present. Through close readings of works like Phantastes, The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Neverending Story, A Wrinkle in Time and Out of the Silent Planet, this book explores how mythopoeic fantasy speaks to the deepest concerns of the human heart. It investigates the genre's use of an imagination that is sometimes atrophied by the demands of contemporary life, and explores how fantasy provides restoration, consolation and hope within a cultural context that too often decries such ideas. Each chapter focuses on a representative text, providing author background and engaging relevant scholarship on a variety of relevant thematic issues. Offering new insights on these classic texts by drawing upon post-secular critical approaches, this work is suitable for both new and seasoned students of fantasy.

The Pursuit of Myth in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan and John Forbes traces a tradition of revolutionary self-mythologising in the lives and works of Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan and John Forbes, as a significant trefoil in twentieth-century English language poetry. All three had untimely deaths, excited a collective homage, and developed cult followings that reverberate today. This book tracks the transmission of the poem as charm, the poet as charmer, and the reinstitution of troubadour erotics as a kind of social poetics. Starting with Orpheus, the book refreshes the myth of the poet as mythmaker, examining how myths of “self” and “nation” are regenerated for the twenty-first century and how persons-as-myths are made in community through coteries of artists and beyond. Duncan Bruce Hose's critical vocabulary, with its nucleus of mythos, searches the edges of phenomenal enquiry, closing in on the work of “glamour”, “aura”, “charm”, “possession”, “phantasm”, the “daemonic”, and the logic of haunting in the continuing being of these three poets as “charismatic animals”.

Césaire écrit La Tragédie du roi Christophe, la « première pièce noire » de notre littérature, choisissant comme matériau dramatique l'épopée haïtienne où à l'heure de la « première secousse », l'homme noir se met debout contre l'esclavage. Il s'inspire de l'histoire des chefs d'esclaves insurgés, pères fondateurs de la nation haïtienne et dont les représentations naïves apparaissent encore sur les murs en ruines de Port-au-Prince. Sans trahir cette histoire, Césaire la transcende et concentre en elle le passé, le présent et l'avenir non encore exprimés de l'humanité opprimée. Le trajet symbolique de sa poésie synthétise en une culture plurielle des éléments mythiques puisés dans les mythologies africaine, caraïbe, européenne, égyptienne qui par palingénésie, engendre le mythe du roi Christophe. L'ouvrage dévoile l'émergence d'un mythe moderne, celui de la négritude, indissociable des indépendances du Tiers-Monde du XXe siècle, et l'intègre à la mythologie de la littérature francophone où il trouve sa légitime place.

The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Miéville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.

This volume is perhaps the most in-depth exploration ever undertaken of Tolkien's world. Accessible but authoritative, and fully illustrated, it is now being reissued with a stunning new cover treatment and updated commentary on new books, films, games, and shows. This book, originally published in 2013 and richly illustrated with photographs and artwork, was the first to connect all the threads of influence on Tolkien that infused his creation of Middle-earth—from the languages, poetry, and mythology of medieval Europe and ancient Greece and Rome to the halls of Oxford and the battlefields of World War I. Snyder examines the impact of these works on our modern culture, from 1960s counterculture to fantasy publishing, gaming, music, and beyond. The reissue has a gorgeous, updated cover design with a custom illustration on foil-stamped faux cloth and additional pages of material covering new developments.

This study addresses the question of artistic identity and the myth of the artist as it has been shaped by the artists themselves. While the term artist is to be understood in a broad sense, the focus of this study is the literature of the Romantic tradition. Identity is largely perceived as a construct, and a central hypothesis of this book concerns its aesthetic value and the ways it creates dominant narratives of self-perception that produce powerful myths.The construction of the artist's identity, be it collective or personal, rests on a series of aesthetic praxes. Caught between the mythic idealisation of poetic genius and its social devaluation, the Romantic artist seeks to create a place for himself, and in doing so, he engages in his own mythmaking. This process is studied in an interdisciplinary perspective, approaching texts and writers from different traditions. The study analyses various typologies of the artist, numerous mythmaking strategies as well as several postural techniques; all of which have sketched major direct or indirect fictional self-portraits in the European tradition.

In Virginia Woolf's Mythic Method, Amy C. Smith reinvigorates scholarly analysis of myth in Virginia Woolf's fiction by examining how Woolf engaged social and political issues in her work. Through close readings of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Between the Acts, Smith argues that Woolf develops a paratactic method of alluding to Greek myth that is shaped by the style of archaic oral literature and her intersectional feminist insights. By revising such famously paradoxical figures as the Great Goddess, the Eleusinian deities, Dionysus, Odysseus, and the Sirens, Woolf illustrates the links between epistemological and metaphysical assumptions and war, empire, patriarchy, capitalism, and fascism. At the same time, her use of parataxis to invoke ancient myth unsettles authorial control and empowers readers to participate in making meaning out of her juxtaposed fragments. In contrast to T. S. Eliot's more prominent mythic method, which seeks to control the anarchy of modern life, Woolf's paratactic method envisions more livable forms of sociality by destabilizing meaning in her novels, an agenda that aligns better with our contemporary understandings of modernism.

Myths such as Narcissus'reflection, Pandora's box, and Plato's cave have been used to frame modern technological dangers; often to describe people absorbed in their own digital reflections. Such speculation either purports that technology has a magical power or else that technology merely represents human nature unchanged from the myth's inception. But those accounts ignore the paradoxical understandings of the power relationships allegorized, where people are manipulated by higher forces beyond their comprehension. Working from the assumption that capitalism rather than God is the highest power, this book examines mythic anticipations of the screen and digital technology from European literature, poetry, folklore and philosophy. Digital technology and social media are approached not as reflections of human nature but capitalist ideology's power to enchant. To this end, Capitalism and the Enchanted Screen also surveys a diverse variety of films, digital media and contemporary artworks to understand and critique how myths are reimagined today.

Como la Ifigenia apoyada a la izquierda del templete en la imagen que ilustra la portada de este volumen, cada uno de los autores del mismo trae consigo una llave. Con ella se invita al lector a acceder a diferentes lugares desde los que contemplar la complejidad del mito griego, tan presente en la cultura actual como difícil de comprender si nos quedamos quietos y lo observamos desde una única perspectiva.Un primer bloque de capítulos ofrece las claves para aproximarse a las diferentes teorías sobre el mito, a la relación de este con la mitografía y a la compleja conexión entre mito e imagen. En segundo lugar, se abren las puertas a diversos géneros literarios que colocaron al mito en un lugar central: la épica, la lírica, la tragedia y la retórica. A continuación, se dedican una serie de capítulos al estudio de las relaciones del mito con las llamadas religiones mistéricas y con la magia, así como a su papel en los orígenes del cristianismo y su conexión con la política. La idea de observar el mito desde diferentes lugares está muy presente, en fin, en el enfoque de la última sección, en la cual las claves las aportan la teoría de género, la psicología evolutiva, la arqueología y el cine.Un último capítulo invita al lector a adentrarse en la aventura comparatista con el hilo conductor de los relatos sobre el diluvio, un motivo que se incluye en el catálogo de “calamidades universales”. Inmersos como estamos en otra pandémica catástrofe, las editoras agradecen su esfuerzo a cuantos han hecho posible que este volumen llegara a puerto seguro.

Why do contemporary writers use myths from ancient Greece and Rome, Pharaonic Egypt, the Viking north, Africa's west coast, and Hebrew and Christian traditions? What do these stories from premodern cultures have to offer us?The Metamorphoses of Myth in Fiction since 1960 examines how myth has shaped writings by Kathy Acker, Margaret Atwood, William S. Burroughs, A. S. Byatt, Neil Gaiman, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Jeanette Winterson, and others, and contrasts such canonical texts with fantasy, speculative fiction, post-singularity fiction, pornography, horror, and graphic narratives. These artistic practices produce a feeling of meaning that doesn't need to be defined in scientific or materialist terms. Myth provides a sense of rightness, a recognition of matching a pattern, a feeling of something missing, a feeling of connection. It not only allows poetic density but also manipulates our moral judgments, or at least stimulates us to exercise them. Working across genres, populations, and critical perspectives, Kathryn Hume elicits an understanding of the current uses of mythology in fiction.

In First Things Mary Jacobus combines close readings with theoretical concerns in an examination of the many forms taken by the mythic or phantasmic mother in literary, psychoanalytic and artistic representations.She carefully explores the ways in which the maternal imaginary informs both unconscious processes and signifying practices at all levels. Her fierce analysis of specific texts and paintings raises questions about the the symbolic and biological maternal body and how they relate to each other in literary and psychoanalytic terms. The invocation of writings by Kleist, Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Malthus and de Sade, along with analysis of French revolutionary iconography and Realist and Impressionist paintings by Eakins and Morisot, make this wide-ranging text a truly interdisciplinary study.First Things sees literary theory and psychoanalysis as mutually illuminating practices. The work of Freud, Klein, Kristeva and Bion shape an inquiry into such topics as population discourse, surrogate motherhood, AIDS, mastectomy and psychoanalysis itself. In addition, Jacobus elaborates on Freud's oedipal preconceptions, Klein's missing theory of signs, memory, melancholia, narcissism and maternal reverie.

This book studies culture in terms of myths and how they function to construct the identity of communities. It focuses on myth formation in the fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh, two major twentieth century authors from Nigeria and India respectively. The book analyses how these two authors use myth in their works to study the cultural mores of the societies they represent. Achebe represents the Igbo community of Nigeria and Amitav Ghosh represents various communities in India in both the pre-colonial and postcolonial phases, ranging from Bihar to Sundarbans in south Bengal. The book focuses on the area of myth studies in the postcolonial area of study, delving into a comparative study between the two authors and how they contribute to myth studies through their fiction.

Ever since his childhood and adolescence and before he became a legendary poet, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron, felt the sense of escaping from the anxieties of his traumatic present to the glorious worlds of Eastern history and mythology. In Eastern mythology, which he read and loved, Byron approached his own utopia and dystopia without distancing himself from current world affairs. He heard the voice of mythology in various forms: in Nature and its animate and inanimate elements, in nightingales, eagles, roses, trees, bushes, mountains, plains, oceans, stones, and rocks, and in ancient relics, among others. Nature and the ruins of the past spoke to him more truth about God, Man, and Nature than religion and history books. His immediate impressions while being on-the-spot, his mobility, his standing on the borderlines of fact and fiction, and his extensive references to Eastern mythology in his works, created a Byronic myth and enhanced the mythical quality of his works, especially Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I and II, and his Oriental Tales—The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, and The Siege of Corinth. Lord Byron became an archetype of a legendary celebrity, and his works and some of his characters, especially his Byronic Heroes and Heroines, became universal mythical characters. Among several questions, the book answers two major ones: First, how does Byron use Eastern mythology, including Greek, Persian, and Arabian in the above-mentioned works to render his own poetry mythological? And second, how do his personal affairs and mythological works contribute to the generation of the still living Byronic myth?

Kurt Vonnegut: Myth and Science in the Postmodern World attempts to understand, in Vonnegut's novels, how Darwin's theory of evolution functions as a cosmogonic myth that is widely accepted in order to explain why the world is as it is and why things happen as they do, to provide a rationale for social customs and observances, and to establish the sanctions for the rules by which Vonnegut's characters conduct their lives. Moreover, this study deals with how and why Kurt Vonnegut's fiction represents the changing human image resulting from Darwinism. The book's theoretical approach is based primarily on ideas from myth criticism and complemented by treatises on evolution.

O livro A representação do Mito de Sísifo em O Convidado, de Murilo Rubião examina a literatura muriliana sob a perspectiva do mito e também como o mito de Sísifo é representado nos contos de Murilo Rubião, por meio das ações das personagens e da construção de suas narrativas, revelando o modo como esses contos apresentam uma severa crítica social.

La première partie met en évidence les relations entre le mythe et la société et montre comment les représentations mythiques influencent notre perception du monde, gouvernent nos idéologies et déterminent nos rapports sociaux. La seconde partie traite du réinvestissement de la matière mythique issue de la tradition orale dans la littérature écrite. Cet ouvrage démontre bien que le mythe est une lecture du monde et de l'existence humaine, à la fois quête génésique et éclairage contemporain.

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973), Philologe an der Universität Oxford, ist den meisten Menschen durch seine Romanreihe Der Herr der Ringe bekannt. Weniger bekannt dagegen ist, dass der streng gläubige Katholik in seinem literarischen Wirken eine Art des religiösen Vollzugs sah, der nicht im Widerspruch zu seinem tiefen Glauben stand. Seinem Verständnis nach führte er als'Zweitschöpfer'den biblischen Schöpfungsauftrag fort, indem er einen von tiefer innerer Wahrheit geprägten Mythos erschuf. Den aufmerksamen Rezipienten ist schon sehr früh aufgefallen, dass Tolkien Elemente unterschiedlicher religiöser Traditionen mit Motiven aus verschiedenen Mythen verwebt, mit denen er sich im Rahmen seiner akademischen Tätigkeiten beschäftigte. Diese Arbeit zeigt, dass die religiöse Rezeptionsgeschichte demnach sehr früh beginnt und immer noch nicht abgeschlossen ist, wenngleich die religiösen Bildwelten heute vom Publikum nicht mehr automatisch als christliche bzw. religiöse Bilder wahrgenommen werden.

The rich legacy of women's contributions to Irish theatre is traditionally viewed through a male-dominated literary canon and mythmaking, thus arguably silencing their work. In this timely book, Shonagh Hill proposes a feminist genealogy which brings new perspectives to women's mythmaking across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The performances considered include the tableaux vivants performed by the Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland), plays written by Alice Milligan, Maud Gonne, Lady Augusta Gregory, Eva Gore-Booth, Mary Devenport O'Neill, Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, Paula Meehan, Edna O'Brien and Marina Carr, as well as plays translated, adapted and performed by Olwen Fouéré. The theatrical work discussed resists the occlusion of women's cultural engagement that results from confinement to idealised myths of femininity. This is realised through embodied mythmaking: a process which exposes how bodies bear the consequences of these myths, while refusing to accept the female body as passive bearer of inscription through the assertion of a creative female corporeality.

From the earliest slave narratives to modern fiction by the likes of Colson Whitehead and Jesmyn Ward, African American authors have drawn on African spiritual practices as literary inspiration, and as a way to maintain a connection to Africa. This volume has collected new essays about the multiple ways African American authors have incorporated Voodoo, Hoodoo and Conjure in their work. Among the authors covered are Frederick Douglass, Shirley Graham, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ntozake Shange, Rudolph Fisher, Jean Toomer, and Ishmael Reed.

Per tutta la sua breve ma intensissima vita, Leopardi non smise mai di pensare al mito, concependolo non soltanto come un modo di manifestarsi della sapienza antica, appartenente all'infanzia del mondo e innervante il procedere epocale della storia umana (come pensava ad esempio Gian Battista Vico), né solo come una semplice espressione della soggettività volta a esorcizzare il terribile della natura, ma piuttosto come una modalità ontologica di darsi delle cose stesse, potendo sopravvivere solo in un paesaggio in penombra, non abbagliato da alcuna illuminazione diretta. Dopo aver tracciato per linee essenziali il dibattito su mito e mitologia nell'Europa del xviii secolo, l'autore avanza una nuova lettura dell'Infinito, collocando questo capolavoro assoluto della letteratura universale all'interno di un duplice contesto: quello della formazione poetica e filosofica di Leopardi e quello dell'epoca romantica italiana ed europea in cui il poeta visse. Se nella modernità i fenomeni sono diventati oggetto di studio delle scienze della natura, perdendo così la loro vitalità irriducibile al concetto, il sentire persuaso degli antichi non potrà più essere riproposto per evocare l'apparire delle cose nella forma di figure mitologiche non più credibili, come i fauni o le ninfe, Dafne o Procne ecc. Mentre nel corso del xix secolo sta avviandosi al tramonto la grande stagione del sublime riesumata dalla tarda antichità, Leopardi – attingendo alle radici più profonde dell'Umanesimo italiano – pensa la sopravvivenza del mito nella rappresentazione di quella sottile linea impalpabile, ma intensamente viva – «il celeste confine» divenuto poi «l'ultimo orizzonte» – che separa e unisce il visibile e l'invisibile, per evocare l'irrappresentabile proprio dell'arte e del pensiero moderni.

This book presents a collection of essays discussing a history of the five myths of Dionysus, Narcissus, Prometheus, Marcolf, and Labyrinth in twentieth-century literature. The author traces their transformations against the wider backdrop of Polish and European literature. The book is an excellent, thought-provoking lesson in understanding the signs of contemporary culture and a fascinating journey through its complex trails.

Big on style, slight on substance: that has been a common charge over the years by critics of John Updike. In fact, however, John Updike is one of the most serious writers of modern times. Myth, as Myth and Gospel in the Fiction of John Updike shows, unlocks his fictional universe and repeatedly breaks open the powerful themes in his literary parables of the gospel. This book also includes a personal tribute to John Updike by his son David, essays by pioneer Updike scholars Alice and Kenneth Hamilton, and an anecdotal chapter in which readers share Updike discoveries and recommendations. All in all, weight is added to the complaint that the master of myth and gospel was shortchanged by the Nobel committee.

The private non-rational pattern, the personal myth of an artist'is in fact … the source of the coherence of his argument.'(Northrop Frye) The critic must recognize that myth, or fail to understand fully the artist's statement and method. This is the basic premise of Mr. McPherson's study. He formulates the idea that Hawthorne's work rises out of a personal mythology, a hidden life in which his deepest interests and conflicts are transformed into images and characters. As Hawthorne himself said:'[An author's] external habits, his abode, his casual associates and other matters entirely on the surface... These things hide the man, instead of displaying him. You must make quite another kind of inquest, and look through the whole range of his fictitious characters, good and evil, in order to detect any of his essential traits.'-- Preface to The Snow Image. Mr. McPherson largely ignores the externals to allow the character types, image patterns, and narrative configurations of Hawthorne's art to speak for themselves. He begins by reconstructing Hawthorne's personal legend as it is revealed in his writing and subsequent scholarship. He then turns to Hawthorne's idealized reinterpretations of Greek myth, and in part III he discusses the sombre tales of experience and Hawthorne's New England myth, and suggests that the so-called'Gothic trappings'are essential parts of his statement. The author's research in this section produces surprising illuminations of many chapters and incidents that have long puzzled critics and readers. The image of Hawthorne that emerges from this excellent study is a radical departure from current Freudian, Christian, and New Critical views of his work. Hawthorne thought of himself as'Oberon'(his college nickname). Mr. McPherson is the first critic who has entertained this idea seriously.

La passione non ricambiata di Venere per Adone in Shakespeare; lo sciogliersi in acqua di Aretusa nel momento culminante della fuga e le metamorfosi impossibili di Ofelia e Amleto; il miraggio dell'Atlantide platonica nei romantici; la costellazione inesistente del Cavaliere, figura di poesia, nei Sonetti a Orfeo di Rilke: questa raccolta di saggi analizza alcune presenze e funzioni del mito classico nella poesia europea tra Cinquecento e Novecento. Il filo rosso è costituito dal motivo dell'assenza, che si intreccia alla passione non tanto in senso tematico quanto come costruzione retorica e filigrana narrativa e concettuale.

Divided into two parts, this volume includes contributions focused on both myth and some of its contemporary reflections (Part I) and the connection between myth, music and ritual (Part II). The fifteen contributions gathered here are authored by academics and researchers from Brazil, France, Poland, Mexico, South Africa and Romania. They focus on a variety of subjects, including folklore, literature, classical and traditional music, science-fiction, philosophy, and religion, among others.The volume operates with an awareness of the capital role the study of the imaginary, with all its implications, is playing in the contemporary world.

This title, originally published in 1985, examines conceptions of success and the good life expressed in bestselling novels – ranging from historical sagas and spy thrillers to more serious works by Updike, Bellows, Steinbeck and Mailer – published from 1945 to 1975. Using these popular books as cultural evidence, Elizabeth Long argues that the meaning of the American dream has changed dramatically, but in a more complex fashion than has been recognised by that country's most prominent social critics. Her study presents a challenge to prevailing social-scientific views of contemporary American culture, and represents, both in theory and method, an important contribution to the study of culture and social criticism.

Much can be learned from a nation's literature. Examining three hundred years of cultural traditions, Katherine L. Morrison, a former American, now a Canadian, takes the reader through the historical, political, and sociological milieu of Canada and the United States to dispel misconceptions that they share near-identical social attitudes and historical experiences.To most Americans and much of the rest of the world, America and Canada differ little except in terms of climate. It is true that they share a common British heritage and immigration patterns, but there are subtle cultural differences between the two countries. These may appear insignificant to Americans, but they are not insignificant to Canadians. Comparing mythologies each of the countries share about the other, the author examines national views of their histories, from the common origin of both nations in the American Revolution, through the two world wars. She also examines the role of nature and images of place and home in Canadian and American literary writing, noting the disparate historical development of the two national literatures. Using specific works by recognized authors of their time, Morrison considers the role of religion and the church, violence and the law, and humor and satire, in the literature of both countries. The book also explores the role of women, race, and class in the literature of both countries. It concludes with a discussion of the tenacity of national myths, and draws some tentative conclusions.Now published in paperback in the United States, Morrison's broad-based approach to a largely unexplored subject will invite future study as well as improve understanding between Canada and the United States. Canadians and Americans will be of interest to cultural historians, American studies specialists, political scientists, and sociologists.

A psychological interpretation of Marie de France's Guigemar, a lai that uses the legend of Hercules as a vehicle for her ideas on love and duty in society.

Elizabeth I is one of England's most admired and celebrated rulers. She is also one of its most iconic: her image is familiar from paintings, film and television.This wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the origins and development of the image and myths that came to surround the Virgin Queen. The essays question the prevailing assumptions about the mythic Elizabeth and challenge the view that she was unambiguously celebrated in the literature and portraiture of the early modern era. They explain how the most familiar myths surrounding the queen developed from the concerns of her contemporaries and yet continue to reverberate today.Published to mark the 400th anniversary of the queen's death, this volume will appeal to all those with an interest in the historiography of Elizabeth's reign and Elizabethan, and Jacobean, poets, dramatists and artists.

First published in 1976, this book provides a helpful introduction to the study of myth as a concept and its relationship to literature. It examines historically some of the leading theories concerning the nature and origins of myth and, with reference to a wide variety of texts, illustrates the relevance of these theories to literature. It also considers the different ways in which myths have been perceived over time, both positive and negative, and the effect this has had on the production of new mythologies. It concludes with an assessment if the problems created by the presence of myth in literature and its use as a tool of literary criticism.

Eric Gould revises some current assumptions in literary myth criticism, especially Jungian notions of the archetype and myth's immanence in literature that have dominated literary studies for so long. Working from structuralist theories of language, myth, and psyche, he defines myth as part of the symbolic order of language which grows out of the duplicity of the sign.Originally published in 1981.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.

Dans l'après-guerre comme dans les années 80, la recrudescence des mythes grecs et latins dans une trentaine de romans de langue allemande entraîne un jeu passionnant de narration et de réécriture. Entre création et recréation, la redécouverte d'un mythe interroge à la fois un fondement culturel essentiel et le monde contemporain. Mais le recours au mythe laisse aussi affleurer toute une interrogation sur le genre choisi. Jusqu'où peut aller le roman contemporain quand il véhicule un mythe? Quatre textes (Der blaue Kammerherr de Wolf von Niebelschütz, Amanda de Irmtraud Morgner, L'esthétique de la résistance de Peter Weiss et Medusa de Stefan Schütz) ont poussé la réflexion jusqu'à penser le renouveau d'un genre, l'épopée, alliant ainsi de façon plus conséquente et plus audacieuse que les autres romans une réflexion sur le fond et sur la forme. Du mythe à l'épopée, c'est le caractère singulier d'une récriture contemporaine qui ressort de cette étude.