Abstract:

Homer’s The Odyssey is the archetypal quest story. The dialogue began with Homer, and contemporary texts and popular culture media have continued the tradition of deconstructing and recreating stories, addressing issues related to the human psyche. As Hardwick and Stray note, the relationship between ancient and modern is “not merely inherited but constantly made and remade,” one that we see in the following varied genres and versions that retell the Odyssean myth, relating re-visions of characters, relationships, structures, and themes. The original Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais” is an allegory of the Odyssean quest for human knowledge, while Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife presents a modern magical story of love, and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad is a story of “slippery truth,” debunking the heroic and romantic. Continue Reading →

Abstract:

This article explores the relationship between the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Viktor Pelevin’s 2006 adaptation of it, The Helmet of Horror, particularly how it can serve as a case study for the nature and significance of adaptation. It examines the idea of memory, a central theme of the novel, and considers how three aspects of the original myth – the Minotaur, Ariadne’s thread, and the labyrinth itself – shape and inform Pelevin’s retelling. Each of these is unique to this myth in antiquity, and together, they structure the story. Each is also fundamentally connected to the idea of memory: the Minotaur is a living reminder of Pasiphae’s transgression, Ariadne’s thread is the mnemonic that allows Theseus to escape, and the labyrinth is a structure whose very nature is designed to challenge memory by creating confusion. Continue Reading →

Abstract:

Pedagogical practices in Reception-based courses on ancient Greece and Rome in film often focus on an individual film’s connections to its historical themes and meta-narrative. In contrast, courses based on Film Studies often focus pedagogical discourses on filmic techniques or the filmmaking process per se. Regularly, the two approaches remain discrete and discipline-based. Continue Reading →

Abstract:

Chris Nolan’s 2010 film Inception uses architecture as a language whereby to comment upon the relationship of the protagonist, Dom Cobb, with his deceased wife, Mal. This paper argues that three classical models – Homer’s tomb of Myrhine described in the Iliad, Iphigeneia’s dream of the collapse of the house of Agamemnon in Euripides’s Iphigeneia Among the Taurians, and Simonides’ Memory Palace mnemonic technique – manifest parallel uses of architecture as a metaphor for mind. Continue Reading →

Abstract:

Knowledge of Ovid is invaluable for analyzing Nancy Meyers’s film What Women Want (2000).  Advertising executive Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) is a sexist, chauvinistic ladies’ man who acquires the ability to hear what women are thinking. He is in effect a second Tiresias, and this article examines him in light of the gender-bending seer from the Metamorphoses. Meyers links Nick’s miraculous transformation to his attempt to listen to women while simultaneously cross-dressing. He subsequently becomes an intermediary between the genders, especially on sexual matters. The article further examines the Nick/Tiresias parallel in light of Ovid’s treatment of other Theban myths in Book 3.  Like Pentheus, Actaeon, and Narcissus, Nick is a frequent practitioner of the voyeuristic “gaze.” And like them, he is both deeply narcissistic and sorely lacking when it comes to self-knowledge.

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Abstract:

Despite a chronological gulf of nearly two thousand years, the second century C.E. Greek romance writer Longus and the early twentieth century Irish novelist Henry de Vere Stacpoole were prompted to produce their best works by a similar motive: an urge to explore the world, and particularly the phenomenon of love and desire, from a standpoint of complete innocence. Although the resulting novels, Daphnis & Chloe and The Blue Lagoon respectively, have no evident direct connection, they exhibit surprising similarities not only in plot, setting, and characterization, but also in the values, perspectives, and worldviews they advance. The striking intersections between these two chronologically and geographically diverse works offer us a lens for examining persistent notions of “natural” versus learned masculinity and femininity, for exploring the dynamics behind patriarchal power structures, and for scrutinizing how these issues relate to ideas about the value and merits of civilization. Moreover, analysis of the features common to Longus’ work and the Blue Lagoon narrative, particularly as it is manifested in Randal Kleiser’s 1980 film adaptation of the novel, can serve as a useful pedagogical tool as well. By utilizing an accessible product of popular culture to bring a little-known ancient Greek novel to life, this comparison helps to drive home the persistence of ideologies and power structures that initially seem remote and thus suggests to today’s students the continuing relevance of works from classical antiquity in our modern world in a way that looking at the ancient work in isolation – or even in conjunction with its more direct descendants – cannot. Continue Reading →