Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dr Justine McConnell (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, King's College London, UK) ,  Edith Hall (University of Durham, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Volume:   1
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.581kg
ISBN:  

9781472579379

ISBN 10:   1472579372
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   02 June 2016
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction, Justine McConnell 1 From Anthropophagy to Allegory and Back: A Study of Classical Myth and the Brazilian Novel, Patrice Rankine 2 Ibrahim Al-Koni’s Lost Oasis as Atlantis and His Demon as Typhon, William M. Hutchins 3 Greek Myth and Mythmaking in Witi Ihimaera’s The Matriarch and The Dream Swimmer, Simon Perris 4 War, Religion and Tragedy: The Revolt of the Muckers in Luiz Antonio de Assis Brasil’s Videiras de Cristal, Sofia Frade 5 Translating Myths, Translating Fictions, Lorna Hardwick 6 Echoes of Ancient Greek Myths in Murakami Haruki’s novels and in Other Works of Contemporary Japanese Literature, Giorgio Amitrano 7 ‘It’s All in the Game’: Greek Myth and The Wire, Adam Ganz 8 Writing a New Irish Odyssey: Theresa Kishkan’s A Man in a Distant Field, Fiona Macintosh 9 The Minotaur on the Russian Internet: Viktor Pelevin’s Helmet of Horror, Anna Ljunggren 10 Diagnosis: Overdose – Status: Critical. Odysseys in Bernhard Schlink’s Die Heimkehr, Sebastian Matzner 11 Narcissus and the Furies: Myth and Docufiction in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, Edith Hall 12 Philhellenic Imperialism and the Invention of the Classical Past: Twenty-first Century Re-imaginings of Odysseus in the Greek War for Independence, Efrossini Spentzou 13 The ‘Poem of Force’ in Australia: David Malouf, Ransom and Chloe Hooper, The Tall Man, Margaret Reynolds 14 Young Female Heroes from Sophocles to the Twenty-First Century, Helen Eastman 15 Generation Telemachus: Dinaw Mengestu’s How to Read the Air, Justine McConnell

Reviews

This is an enjoyable, scholarly and illuminating collection of essays that highlights the continuing significance of ancient Greek texts for writers across the world today. I found it a horizon-expanding reading experience. -- Susan Bassnett, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Glasgow, UK This volume of exciting analyses of fiction published after 1989 in all corners of the world is a reminder that if classical literature comes from the past it definitely belongs to the present. Any reader of this book will have a hard time believing that modern culture can be understood without constant use of this stock of stories. Through centuries the ancient texts, plots and characters have penetrated our ways of seeing the world. This volume is a living proof that today's literature, film and media products constantly engage in a surprising and not always respectful dialogue with Homer, Virgil, Euripides and lot of others long dead and gone. They are messengers from a time before national literatures and national cultures crossing over to a global world breaking away from national boundaries. This lively, learned and engaging book offers a rich resource for students, teachers and everybody who enjoys contemporary fiction. -- Svend Erik Larsen, Professor of Comparative Literature, Aarhus University, Denmark, Vice-President of the Academia Europaea, co-editor of Orbis Litterarum

Author Information

Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at King’s College London, and Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama in Oxford, UK. She has published more than twenty books on ancient Greek culture and its reception including The Return of Ulysses (2008), Greek Tragedy(2010), Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris (2013) and Introducing the Ancient Greeks (2015). Justine McConnell is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (2013), and co-editor of Ancient Slavery and Abolition: from Hobbes to Hollywood (2011) and The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (2015).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions