Mythical Figure Research Articles

Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Receptions Down Under ed. by Marguerite Johnson

Reviewed by: Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Receptions Down Under ed. by Marguerite Johnson Phillip Zapkin Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Receptions Down Under. Edited by Marguerite Johnson. Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception. London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2019. Pp. xi + 293. Hardback, $102.60, eBook, $82.08. ISBN 978-1-350-02123-5. Marguerite Johnson’s edited collection Antipodean Antiquities makes a fantastic contribution to the expanding field of Classics and colonialism or post- colonialism. The authors take various approaches to the role, influence and engagement with Classics in Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) culture—including (among other things) early colonial comparisons with mythical [End Page 124] landscapes, paintings commemorating ANZAC service at Gallipoli, young adult novels reimagining Classical stories and contemporary films/television shot in New Zealand. The volume provides a solid foundation for further focus on Classical reception in Australasia, which has received comparatively little critical attention until recently. As with most Classical reception studies, this book takes a complex approach to the cultural work done by ANZ authors and artists as they deploy Classics. Many of the essays address how Australian and New Zealand values like independence, individuality and freedom intersect with Classical texts, often seen as representing conservative European traditions. For instance, Anne Rogerson argues that Sulari Gentill’s young adult Hero Trilogy “encourages a very Antipodean scepticism towards authority and political leaders” as mythical leaders/heroes are exposed as petty, selfish, and violent (167). At the same time, in Australia and New Zealand’s attempts to define their own cultural places distinct from their British roots, Europe has provided a strong foundation for Antipodean artists to try and engage their world. This was especially true in the early days of Australian colonialism, as Johnson and Rachel White’s essays show. Johnson examines depictions equating Aboriginal peoples with mythical figures, and White follows a pattern of references to Hades in convict descriptions of their prisons. Seeking inspiration from European Classics remains an important aspect of Antipodean reception, as Hannah Parry’s essay about Peter Jackson’s NZ-filmed Lord of the Rings Trilogy shows. Parry argues that “in adapting a text partly influenced by classical epic into an epic of a different kind, the filmmakers engage in an act of Classical Reception, adapting classical themes and motifs for a new audience and a new medium” (224). These concerns about how ANZ artists navigate their relationship with Classical culture and with their British colonial history are central to Antipodean Antiquities; Johnson describes this navigation as “the dual process at the core of Antipodean Classical Reception Studies: the symbiotic action of a subject nation’s gaze ‘upwards’ in mimetic response to the imperial gaze ‘downwards’” (2). The book is organized primarily by genres: Part II is on theatre, Part III on NZ poetry, then fiction, painting and printing, and finally Part XI is about film. Part I, composed of Johnson’s and White’s essays, looks at the earliest classical references from Australia. For those with a particular generic focus, this makes the book extremely easy to navigate, which is a major benefit. However, across these different genre-focused sections, particular themes recur, giving the book an overall unity. For example, several of the authors utilize feminist analysis (Jane Montgomery Griffiths, Anna Jackson, Elizabeth Hale, Leanne Glass, etc.) and [End Page 125] several focus on YA literature (Hale, Babette Pütz, Rogerson, etc.). One weakness of the collection—as Johnson acknowledges in the introduction (4)—is the lack of indigenous voices, either Australian Aboriginal, Maori or from the broader Polynesian community. The only text created by an indigenous person discussed closely in the book is Wesley Enoch’s Black Medea, analyzed by Michael Ewans and Johnson, and there are no essays by indigenous authors. Despite the notable lack of Maori and Aboriginal voices, the collection does include multiple essays focused on or referencing issues of indigenous rights or multiculturalism (Johnson, Ewans and Johnson, Ika Willis, etc.). The range of essays taking up various thematic concerns shows the dynamic engagement of ANZ artists and writers with Classical materials in different times, and for different contexts and purposes. Given its wide temporal, geographic, generic, thematic and theoretical scopes, Antipodean Antiquities is an excellent...

Associating the image with the myth on ancient Cretan coins: Three case-studies

Cretan coinage is characterized by a multitude of iconographic types, very often mythological in content. Various mythical figures and episodes are often difficult to identify or interpret due to either lack of clues that would lead to an interpretation or to the fact that could be identifiable with more than one existing myth. Thus, the identification of imagery on Cretan coins is not always self evident. Three major mints of the island are examined in this paper in order to investigate local myths, compared with the mythological tradition of mainland Greece; the myth of the Tree Nymph of Gortyn, the myth of the Labyrinth of Knossos and the myth of the Dog-nursed Infant of Kydonia. Cretan cities, through coin imagery and by carefully selecting the represented mythical figures, were bonding theircitizens with a certain heritage, offering a sense of belonging, continuation and ethnic pride differentiating themselves from other ethnic groups and city states of the island.

A Study of Magical Realism in Odiyan through the Collective Conscious of Paruthipulli

Valluvanad was one of the final frontiers for western civilization. A land of immense beauty inhabited by people with strange traditions and practices which could at best is called Paganism. Hinduism which used to be practiced here and identified itself more with the plethora of indigenous beliefs than with the Vedas. Though Tippu Sultan’s invasion and the subsequent British rule did expose them to the world outside, they remained in their small universe happy and content. Hence till the 1970’s most of this region was untouched by modernity therefore unlike the rest of Kerala, still have Tharavads, sacred grooves called pambinkavu, velichapad and of course the rich mythology inherited from ancesters. One of the integral parts of this mythology is the supernatural world inhabited by Odiyans and practitioners of Odiyanseva. Odiyan and the stories associated with it is a major part of folklore. The Odiyan is a mythical figures really, a kind of shape shifting assassin from the stories of Northern Kerala. Odiyans are like any other creature of the night; like vampires, ghosts and succubi, creatures born out of fear and darkness. The legend is still alive though and people in rural areas do believe in the Odiyan.

Two <em>cailleacha</em> in Older Scots comic poetry

This essay investigates two appearances of the Gaelic folk figure, Cailleach Bhéarra (Scot. Gael. Cailleach Bheurr) in Older Scots comic poetry. The translation of the iconic ‘mother-goddess’ or ‘hag’ of Beara into Older Scots is provocative on two levels: foremost, the casual and familiar language used to relate the comic tales demonstrates a rich folk culture that crossed linguistic and geographic boundaries. Both tales center around the Scottish lowlands, which were not traditionally Gaelic speaking, however the mythical figures seem to fit comfortably within the cultural community of Edinburgh and its environs. The tales further merit attention since the figure of the cailleach is mobilized in a festive context that creates a pseudo-historical narrative of the fantastical origins of Scottish landmarks apparently formed by the cailleach's excretions. Considering the folk figure in the context of festive, public entertainment informs our understanding of Scotland's socio-cultural landscape in the early sixteenth century.

"Penny Dreadful" (2014-2016). Postmodern mythology and ontology of otherness

The television series Penny Dreadful (2014-2016) is an appropriation, intertextuality and transfiction exercise of four modern myths from nineteenth-century literature –Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde, 1891) and Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897)– to which the mythological figure of the lycanthrope is added. This myth syncretism is completed by linking these characters, located in the Victorian London of the late 19th century, with different mythologies: biblical, Egyptian, American West, Native American or witch mythology. The article aims to analyse, focusing on the final season of the series, how the narrative complexity of contemporary seriality and the different materialisations of postmodern image –multiplex-image, distance-image and excessimage– become perfect tools to both narrate the identity search of the different characters and subvert and resemantise these modern myths. Their identity searches emerge from an ontology of otherness that defines postmodernity –from otherness of conscience to otherness of other people–, using the mythical figure of the monster. It allows then the subversion and resemantisation of each mythical character, generating a kind of postmodern mythology that reflects on our contemporaneity: feminist emancipation and violent revolution, patriarchy and machismo, family institution, social marginalisation, individualism and lack of commitment, classism and racism.

Key-bearers of Greek Temples: The Temple Key as a Symbol of Priestly Authority

Several Linear B tablets from Pylos and 110 inscriptions dating to the Hellenistic, Roman, and Imperial periods provide evidence for cultic officials as key-holders. Numerous grave stelai and vase paintings depict mortal and mythical figures holding the so-called temple key that served as an iconographic insignia of female priests. Studies in the past were primarily focused on the iconographic material. The present paper covers a whole range of epigraphic sources, which give insight into the procedure for appointment to cultic offices of key-holders, their tasks, and social background.

El mundo mítico de la ‘Cueva de Montesinos’ en la música para Don Quixote de Roberto Gerhard

El presente trabajo estudia el modo en el que el compositor Roberto Gerhard pone en música, en su ballet Don Quixote (1950), la novela Don Quijote de la Mancha de Miguel de Cervantes, concretamente el enigmático episodio de ‘La Cueva de Montesinos’, contenido en la segunda parte de la obra. Se examina cómo el músico trata de producir en el oyente el mismo efecto –ambiguo y contradictorio, mezcla de lo cómico, lo absurdo o lo grotesco– que se genera en el lector de este desconcertante capítulo, poblado de figuras míticas de diferentes épocas, que conviven con un protagonista real. Para ello se analizan, en primer lugar, los diferentes planos míticos y legendarios utilizados por Cervantes; se repasan, en segundo lugar, las fuentes literarias de las que bebe el autor para crear dichos relatos míticos y se estudian, finalmente, los originales medios de los que se vale Roberto Gerhard para llevar a la música el magistral episodio cervantino.

L’humanisme panaméricain de Jacques Stephen Alexis

This essay analyses Jacques Stephen Alexis’ masterpiece Romancero aux étoiles (1960), which can be considered as a practical application of his sociopoetic theories for a Panamerican humanism. Indeed, in this collection of folktales, Alexis revolutionises the popular imaginary and the genres of orature, but he also reintroduces the Taino/Native contribution to the Haitian identity and culture, devoting two tales to two mythical Taino figures: the queen Anacaona and the viens-viens. The analysis of these two tales, “Dit de la Fleur d’Or” and “Le sous-lieutenant enchanté”, allows to understand the new conception developed by Alexis, that of the influence of orature in literature and also his openness to a pluriethnic and pluricultural Americanism.

Maruxaina and port mythology. Approach to a case in San Ciprian (Galician Rias Altas)

This article asks about the reasons for the reappearance of an apparently anachronistic mythical figure, Maruxaina, in the town of San Ciprian, in the Galician Rias Altas, in the late twentieth century. This mythical recovery occurs with the invention of a party that has not stopped growing since its birth. This growth has generated a discussion among the people of San Ciprian. The research revolves around the symbolic nature of this spirit, associated with the sea, which had been created in the past by San Ciprian sailors in order to justify unusual marine phenomena. This approach involves recreating the Maruxaina links with its immediate symbolic influences. All this with the intention of approaching the social fabric that makes up the Galician culture and its possibilities of cultural reaffirmation. The resurgence of Maruxaina raises a whole consideration on the mechanisms of anchoring to the past and the territory of the inhabitants of a town that continues to look towards the ocean.

Art Creations of Pramila Giri

During the 60s and 70s, various new concepts and trends of European modern arts were slowly and nobly emerging in Nepali Art. Traditional Paubha artists and some senior artists such as Chandraman Singh Maskey, Tej Bahadur Chitrakar were following the conventional grammar, characteristics and themes in their art creations.
 There were virtually no women artists in the creative art scene. Later Pramila Giri and Shilu Payri along with some other female artists appeared on the art stage with new ideas and concepts of modernity. Artist Giri in her early stage, was also following the conventional approaches, but later she began to experiment and present her new art forms with mythical figures and themes.
 Her analytical thoughts and search led her to use the various forms, images and symbols of religious and mythical figures of BHAIRAV in her art creations. Thus, she started in presenting the figures and forms plus sculptures on her large size canvas. It was completely a noble approach and presentation.
 BHAIRAV, a gigantic demonic figure but with all the divine powers is regarded as the incarnation of Lord Shiva. Red, white, blue, black colors are used to represent a chosen incarnation of the Lord.
 Thus, if the viewers are familiar with the mythical figures of Lord BHAIRAV, it will be easier to understand the use of colours and the presentations of the figures in her art creations.

TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY PAINTINGS

Before there was an art of abstract painting, it was already widely believed that the value of a picture was a matter of colors and shapes alone. Music and architecture were constantly held up to painters as examples of a pure art which did not have to imitate objects but derived its effects from elements peculiar to itself. But such ideas could not be readily accepted, since no one had yet seen a painting made up of colors and shapes, representing nothing. If pictures of the objects around us were often judged according to qualities of form alone, it was obvious that in doing so one was distorting or reducing the pictures; you could not arrive at these paintings simply by manipulating forms. And in so far as the objects to which these forms belonged were often particular individuals and places, real or mythical figures, bearing the evident marks of a time, the pretension that art was above history through the creative energy or personality of the artist was not entirely clear. In abstract art, however, the pretended autonomy and absoluteness of the aesthetic emerged in a concrete form. Here, finally, was an art of painting in which only aesthetic elements seem to be present.

Evaluation of sperm head abnormality traits and anti-bacterial properties of Achillea millefolium methanolic extract on methotrexate induced albino male mice.

Plants have been used by people from prehistoric times to get rid of suffering and curing ailments. Plants are of the important sources of medicine and a large numbers of drugs in use are derived from plants. Yarrow, a member of the aster family, is closely related to chrysanthemums and chamomile. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) was named after Achilles, the Greek mythical figure who used it to stop the bleeding wounds of his soldiers. Decoctions have been used to treat inflammations, such as hemorrhoids, and headaches. Yarrow contains flavonoids (plant-based chemicals) that increase saliva and stomach acid, helping to improve digestion. Phenolic acids such as caffeic acid and salicylic acid are components of the bioactive compounds present in Achillea millefolium that have anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. This study was designed to assess the fertility and anti-bacterial activity of Yarrow methanolic extract through in vivo (albino male mice) and in vitro (antibacterial activity) studies. Results indicated that higher doses of plant increased sperm head abnormality and this lead to decrease fertility in addition to that antibacterial activity was dose dependant manner. Conclusions: Yarrow contains flavonoids and other chemical constituents which have these effects.

Nzinga Mbandi: From Story to Myth

The figure of Queen Nzinga Mbandi continues to be appreciated in fictional and/or historical narratives as a myth of postcolonial Angolan identity, allowing a continuous approach as to what concerns the modes of cultural representation. In this article, the works of Manuel Pedro Pacavira, Nzinga Mbandi (1975), Pepetela, A gloriosa família: o tempo dos flamengos (1997) and José Eduardo Agualusa, A Rainha Ginga e de como os africanos inventaram o mundo (2014) will be analyzed, as these authors, in different moments of the recent Angolan history, look at this emblematic figure, drawing on historical information produced by Cavazzi, Cadornega or Jean Louis Castilhon, among others. The works now in analysis reiterate the mythical figure of resistance to the European invaders, which was Nzinga Mbandi, or a strong orientation towards the nationalist exaltation supported by it, an evident strategy which, by the rescue of figures and cultural practices, is defined as a means to affirm negritude.

Third-culture Huàllywood: or, ‘Chimerica’ the cinematic return

ABSTRACTRecognising that ‘Chinese cinema(s)’ have spearheaded calls for a ‘critical transnationalism’ I here take the recent neologism Huallywood on its word—but not its tone—to posit an alternative ‘third culture’ “Hàullywood” (from huà (化) drawing in associations with change and transformation) model that helps us understand the making and marketing of mega-budget and mega-revenue transborder films produced in-between what we might call global Hollywood and transnational Huallywood. Seeing Huallywood as a multi-faceted assemblage, I also harnesses the mythical figure of the chimera as a conceptual guide, which in turn becomes articulated to discussion of a cinematic ‘return’ of the economic behemoth that the historian Niall Ferguson’s and economist Moritz Schularick christened Chimerica. Films such as The Great Wall, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story serve as illustrative examples of what a Chimerican or Hàullywood cinema looks like today: this being neither Hollywood or Huallywood, but rather composed of bits and pieces of each. By building its critical arguments through a consideration of news texts and cinematic paratexts, this essay also highlights the importance of studying extra-cinematic media commonly threatened by problems of ‘paratextual ephemerality’; which all the same play an important role in producing cinematic discourses.

Rosto, tela, espelho: reflexões sobre o cinema de Walter Hugo Khouri

O objetivo deste artigo é empreender uma breve análise da relação entre o rosto e a presença de espelhos na obra do realizador brasileiro Walter Hugo Khouri. Os rostos na obra khouriana muitas vezes se mostram impassíveis e difíceis de decifrar, ao mesmo tempo em que o diretor cria diversas cenas em que as personagens observam os próprios rostos refletidos em espelhos, gesto que pode ser associado a figuras míticas como a do Narciso e à ideia da mortalidade. Propomos aqui investigar algumas sequências de reflexão especular a partir do conceito de mise en abyme e acerca de como o aparato de produção e reprodução cinematográficos contribuem para uma duplicação infinita do caráter enigmático do rosto operada por essas três superfícies: rosto, tela e espelho.

Fleeing with one’s back turned: toward feminist futures

Entwining the disciplines of philosophy and architecture, this essay proceeds from an account of the Anthropocene and its dark promise of a foreclosed human future toward the speculative gesture of feminist futures, with a focus on feminist architectural practices. To reflect on the ‘storms of progress’ that have issued in the Anthropocene Walter Benjamin’s famous angel of history is complemented with Bruno Latour’s more recent formulation of an angel of geohistory. Each angel posits the question of what is to be done in the aftermath of the destructions the Anthropos has wrought on a global scale, leaving behind the graffiti-like signature of human industrial toil in the very material geological constitution of the planet’s surface while altering its enclosing atmosphere. While each angel flees the material destructions of human progress they are at the same time confronted with what Isabelle Stengers calls the intrusion of Gaia, a mythical figure who cares little for human history. Drawing to a conclusion the essay ventures the speculative gesture of a feminist future and how this can be supported through feminist practices, specifically in architecture. Such a future does not seek to overcome, to escape or to flee, but as Donna Haraway would have it,1 to stay with the trouble, to work assiduously from the midst of the situations in which we find ourselves.

Memorializing Violence: Identity, Temporality, and the “Vulnerability” of a Mythical Figure in State Graffiti

This essay analyzes the grammar of military graffiti in Nigeria to uncover the mindless posture with which the military deploys it to assert their power, identity, and temporal orientations in ways that not only subvert and shame a minority group and its belief systems, but also expose the brutal and liminal conditions of the state agents. This analysis extends studies of state graffiti by framing the multifold grammatical components as rhetorical acts of domination.

Wild men in Braunschweig – Economies of hope and fear in early modern mining

AbstractThis article investigates the myth of the Wild Man and the figure's symbolic and emotional significance for the Harz mining industry. From about the sixteenth century onward, the Wild Man became a point of identity in the montane region of the Harz Mountains. By analysing the appropriation and meanings of the Wild Man and his connection to mining in different media, especially on coins, this article stresses the importance of investigating not only material and empirical evidence, but also considering the imaginary and affective implications of mining. The changing perceptions of mythical figures such as the Wild Man reflected the desires, hopes, and anxieties of historical persons. They reflected the circumstance that mines represented sources of great wealth, but also delivered terror, injury, and death.

Evita: la Erinia argentina. La construcción del peronismo con letra femenina

Proponemos una lectura de La razón de mi vida, a partir de la descripción del carácter de la narradora, de la justificación ante sus detractores y del afianzamiento de sus cualidades, propicias para la difusión de la causa política. En la configuración de Evita como personaje se potencian rasgos femeninos primitivos, sostenidos en la figura mítica de la Erinia. En la relación de características pretendemos mostrar la eficacia del paradigma mítico en la lógica doctrinal, que configura una matriz apta para exacerbar las potencias oprimidas del estatuto comunitario e inaugurar un modelo de justicia social.

Adela Pineda Franco's Steinbeck and Mexico: A Cinematographic Gaze in the Era of United States Hegemony

Adela Pineda Franco's Steinbeck and Mexico: A Cinematographic Gaze in the Era of United States Hegemony