Adaptation of Classical Myth
Linda Hutcheon’s Theory of Adaptation holds a canonical place on my bookshelf and in my heart. The book’s sanity cuts through problems of theorizing adaption. Hutcheon’s approach is unencumbered by jargon and murk. Since its publication in 2006 and revision in 2013 — 2nd ed. from Routledge …
Scylla was not always the man-eating cliff-dwelling creature that devoured seafarers and their crews. Scylla came to be all that after Circe’s magical potions transformed her into the atavistic horror Odysseus met first-hand. In her earlier existence, Scylla was once a comely young woman whom …
Honoré Daumier’s satirical cartoon “De Charybde en Scylla” (From Charybdis to Scylla) is cataloged in the Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts as a usage of the myth of Odysseus with Scylla and Charybdis. The usage, however, has more to do with Scylla …
OresteiThis post was written for MythMatters in August 2015 and modestly corrected here. Miklós Jancsó adapted the stageplay by L. Gyurkó, Szerelmem, Elektra, into the 1974 film Electra, My Love. The film is very watchable as cinema … for some viewers (to judge by the Amazon.com reviews!). …
The big question, the deep thought behind this post is this: What does it mean when a place like Nashville, TN claims to be “THE Athens of the South”? Granted, I have added the emphatic CAPS. Yet, this was the claim in the age of …
The protagonist of Cold Mountain, Ada, reads to Ruby’s kids and to her own nine-year old daughter the story of Baucis and Philemon, a myth of gained paradise. Without any overt acknowledgement of this myth’s approach within the novel, Frazier uses the myth’s telling as …
Willy Claflin’s “Pegamoose and the Gorgonzola Medusa” is a mythological adaptation of the classical myth of Perseus and Medusa, a kind of doggerel pastiche passing familiar details but veering into a novel account of a heroic moose. Whether or not the result is comic brilliance …