A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology

A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology presents a collection of essays that explore a wide variety of aspects of Greek and Roman myths and their critical reception from antiquity to the present day.

• Reveals the importance of mythography to the survival, dissemination, and popularization of classical myth from the ancient world to the present day
• Features chronologically organized essays that address different sets of myths that were important in each historical era, along with their thematic relevance
• Features chronologically organized essays that address different sets of myths that were important in each historical era, along with their thematic relevance
• Offers a series of carefully selected in-depth readings, including both popular and less well-known examples

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction 1
Vanda Zajko

Part I Mythography 13

1 Greek Mythography 15
Robert L. Fowler

2 Roman Mythography 29
Gregory Hays

3 Myth and the Medieval Church 43
James G. Clark

4 The Renaissance Mythographers 59
John Mulryan

5 Bulfinch and Graves: Modern Mythography as Literary Reception 75
John Talbot

6 Myth Collections for Children 87
Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts

7 Contemporary Mythography: In the Time of Ancient Gods, Warlords, and Kings 105
Ika Willis

Part II Approaches and Themes 121

8 Circean Enchantments and the Transformations of Allegory 123
Greta Hawes

9 The Comparative Approach 139
Sarah Iles Johnston

10 Revisionism 153
Lillian Doherty

11 Alchemical Interpretations of Classical Myths 165
Didier Kahn

12 Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism: On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India 179
Phiroze Vasunia

13 The Golden Age 193
Andreas T. Zanker

14 Matriarchy and Utopia 213
Peter Davies

Part III Myth, Creativity, and the Mind 229

15 The Half‐Blood Hero: Percy Jackson and Mythmaking in the Twenty-First Century 231
Joanna Paul

16 Myth as Case Study 243
Heather Tolliday

17 Mythical Narrative and Self‐Development 257
Meg Harris Williams

18 Finding Asylum for Virginia Woolf ’s Classical Visions 271
Emily Pillinger

Part IV Iconic Figures and Texts 285

19 Orpheus and Eurydice 287
Genevieve Liveley

20 Narcissus and Echo 299
Rosemary Barrow

21 Prometheus, Pygmalion, and Helen: Science Fiction and Mythology 311
Tony Keen

22 Dionysus in Rome 323
Fiachra Mac Góráin

23 Cupid and Psyche 337
Julia Haig Gaisser

24 Constructing a Mythic City in the Book of the City of Ladies: A New Space for Women in Late Medieval Culture 353
Kathryn McKinley

25 Francis Bacon’s Wisdom of the Ancients: Between Two Worlds 367
John Channing Briggs

26 Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus 379
Jeanne Nuechterlein

27 Ancient and Modern Re‐sounding: Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria 391
George Burrows

28 Shelley Prometheus Unbound 407
Michael O’Neill

29 George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion 419
Helen Slaney

30 Camus and the Myth of Sisyphus 433
Kurt Lampe

31 Creative Strategies: Lars von Trier’s Medea 447
Mette Hjort

32 Regarding the Pain of Others with Marsyas: On Tortures Ancient and Modern 463
Lisa Saltzman

Index 475

“Of priceless help in working with the volume – a handbook par excellence, as it is targeted also at non-professional readers – is the fact that the dominant ideas of each essay and its place in the collection are carefully explained in the introduction.” -- Journal of Hellenic Studies 139 (2019)

Vanda Zajko is Reader in Classics at the University of Bristol, UK. She is co-editor with Miriam Leonard of Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought (2006); with Alexandra Lianeri of Translation and the Classic: Identity as Change in the History of Culture (2008); and with Ellen O'Gorman of Classical Myth and Psychoanalysis: Ancient and Modern Stories of the Self (2013).

Helena Hoyle completed her PhD at the University of Bristol in 2016. Her research focused on feminist reader response theory towards Virgil's Aeneid in Ursula Le Guin's Lavinia.

Few literary traditions have left a greater imprint on the modern world than the rich body of myths passed down through the ages from the ancient Greeks and Romans. A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology presents a collection of essays that explore all aspects of the characters and characterizations of Greek and Roman myths and their critical reception from antiquity to the present day. Featuring contributions from top international Classical scholars and experts from cognate fields, readings reveal how ancient myths have been continually interpreted, reinterpreted, and reshaped over time. Initial essays offer a chronological exploration of mythography from Greek to modern times, along with innovative topics such as anthologies of myths for children and contemporary mythography, featuring a discussion of fan-fiction and the graphic novel. Subsequent sections cover a wide range of approaches and themes, as well as the pantheon of iconic figures and texts from antiquity and beyond. Written with impeccable scholarship, A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology offers an essential resource to the evolving reception of Greco-Roman mythology throughout history, while revealing its enduring influences on Western literary and cultural traditions.
"The Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology is a multifaceted book that represents an outstanding example of creative scholarship. Wandering in the labyrinth of its inexhaustible material and disciplines parading through its pages the reader is constantly kept in a state of suspense. To the fundamental question 'what comes next?' each contributor gives his own, imaginative, albeit at times idiosyncratic, response."