Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989 explores the diverse ways that contemporary world fiction has engaged with ancient Greek myth. Whether as a framing device, or a filter, or via resonances and parallels, Greek myth has proven fruitful for many writers of fiction since the end of the Cold War. This volume examines the varied ways that writers from around the world have turned to classical antiquity to articulate their own contemporary concerns. Featuring contributions by an international group of scholars from a number of disciplines, the volume offers a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary approach to contemporary literature from around the world. Analysing a range of significant authors and works, not usually brought together in one place, the book introduces readers to some less-familiar fiction, while demonstrating the central place that classical literature can claim in the global literary curriculum of the third millennium. The modern fiction covered is as varied as the acclaimed North American television series The Wire, contemporary Arab fiction, the Japanese novels of Haruki Murakami and the works of New Zealand's foremost Maori writer, Witi Ihimaera.

Introduction / Justine McConnell -- From anthropophagy to allegory and back: a study of classical myth and the Brazilian novel / Patrice Rankine -- Ibrahim al-Koni's Lost oasis as Atlantis and his demon as Typhon / William M. Hutchins -- Greek myth and mythmaking in Witi Ihimaera's The matriarch (1986) and The dream swimmer / Simon Perris -- War, religion and tragedy: the revolt of the muckers in Luiz Antonio de Assis Brasil's Videiras de Cristal / Sofia Frade -- Translating myths, translating fictions / Lorna Hardwick -- Echoes of ancient Greek myths in Murakami Haruki's novels and in other works of contemporary Japanese literature / Giorgio Amitrano -- "It's all in the game": Greek myth and the wire / Adam Ganz -- Writing a new Irish odyssey: Theresa Kishkan's A man in a distant field / Fiona Macintosh -- The minotaur on the Russian internet: Viktor Pelevin's Helmet of horror / Anna Ljunggren -- Diagnosis: overdose status: critical odysseys in Bernhard Schlink's Die Heimkehr / Sebastian Matzner -- Narcissus and the Furies: myth and docufiction in Jonathan Littell's The kindly ones / Edith Hall -- Philhellenic imperialism and the invention of the classical past: twenty-first century re-imaginings of Odysseus in the Greek war for independence / Efrossini Spentzou -- The "Poem of force" in Australia: David Malouf, Ransom and Chloe Hooper, The tall man / Margaret Reynolds -- Young female heroes from Sophocles to the twenty-first century / Helen Eastman -- Generation Telemachus: Dinaw Mengestu's How to read the air, Ralph Ellison, and Homer / Justine McConnell

Leading and emerging, early career scholars in Classical Reception Studies come together in this volume to explore the under-represented area of the Australasian Classical Tradition. They interrogate the interactions between Mediterranean Antiquity and the antipodean worlds of New Zealand and Australia through the lenses of literature, film, theatre and fine art. Of interest to scholars across the globe who research the influence of antiquity on modern literature, film, theatre and fine art, this volume fills a decisive gap in the literature by bringing antipodean research into the spotlight. Following a contextual introduction to the field, the six parts of the volume explore the latest research on subjects that range from the Lord of the Rings and Xena: Warrior Princess franchises to important artists such as Sidney Nolan and local authors whose work offers opportunities for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis with well-known Western authors and artists.

Greek and Roman epic poetry has always provided creative artists with a rich storehouse of themes: this volume is the first systematic attempt to chart its afterlife across a range of diverse performance traditions, with analysis ranging widely across time, place, genre, and academic and creative disciplines.

An exploration of the diverse uses and abuses of Greek myth in fiction internationally since 1989.

Whether they focus on the bewitching song of the Sirens, his cunning escape from the cave of the terrifying one-eyed Cyclops, or the vengeful slaying of the suitors of his beautiful wife Penelope, the stirring adventures of Ulysses/Odysseus are amongst the most durable in human culture. The picaresque return of the wandering pirate-king is one of the most popular texts of all time, crossing East-West divides and inspiring poets and film-makers worldwide. But why, over three thousand years, has the Odyssey's appeal proved so remarkably resilient and long-lasting? In her much-praised book Edith Hall explains the enduring fascination of Homer's epic in terms of its extraordinary susceptibility to adaptation. Not only has the story reflected a myriad of different agendas, but - from the tragedies of classical Athens to modern detective fiction, film, travelogue and opera - it has seemed perhaps uniquely fertile in generating new artistic forms. Cultural texts as diverse as Joyce's Ulysses, Suzanne Vega's Calypso, Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou?, Daniel Vigne's Le Retour de Martin Guerre and Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain all show that Odysseus is truly a versatile hero. His travels across the wine-dark Aegean are journeys not just into the mind of one of the most brilliantly creative of all the ancient Greek writers. They are as much a voyage beyond the boundaries of a narrative which can plausibly lay claim to being the quintessential global phenomenon.

"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

The stories translated here all of ancient Mesopotamia, and include not only myths about the Creation and stories of the Flood, but also the longest and greatest literary composition, the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is the story of a heroic quest for fame and immortality, pursued by a man of great strength who loses a unique opportunity through a moment's weakness. So much has been discovered in recent years both by way of new tablets and points of grammar and lexicography that these new translations by Stephanie Dalley supersede all previous versions. -- from back cover.

The first group of essays in this volume explores the links between early Norse literature, from the 9th to the 13th century, and the learned world of medieval Europe. In the second group the focus is upon the range of theme and style in Norse mythological poetry. Some of the key texts are considered in relation to Anglo-Saxon poetry as well as to the wider and more archaic Indo-European cultural inheritance. The third group offers detailed analyses of early Norse heroic poetry, of the formatic role of verse in the Icelandic sagas and of the final perfecting of prose as the ultimate saga medium. The 16 essays, taken together, are essential reading for all scholars, critics and historians who seek to understand the development of one of the world's most unusual and sophisticated literatures.

Myths of the Greeks and Romans is an essential guide to ancient literature The myths told by the Greeks and Romans are as important as their history for our understanding of what they believed, thought and felt, and of what they expressed in writing and visual art. Mythology was inextricably interwoven with the entire fabric of their public and private lives. This book discusses not only the purely fictional myths, fairy-tales and folk-tales but the sagas and legends which have some historical grounding. This is not a dictionary of stories, rather a personal selection of the most important and memorable. Michael Grant re-tells these marvellous tales, and then explores the different ways in which they have appeared throughout literature. It is an inspiring study, filled with quotations from literary sources, which gives the reader a fascinating exposition of ancient culture as well as an understanding of how vital the classical world has been in shaping the western culture of today.