Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture

Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture PDF Author: Liz Gloyn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350114340
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
What is it about ancient monsters that popular culture still finds so enthralling? Why do the monsters of antiquity continue to stride across the modern world? In this book, the first in-depth study of how post-classical societies use the creatures from ancient myth, Liz Gloyn reveals the trends behind how we have used monsters since the 1950s to the present day, and considers why they have remained such a powerful presence in our shared cultural imagination. She presents a new model for interpreting the extraordinary vitality that classical monsters have shown, and their enormous adaptability in finding places to dwell in popular culture without sacrificing their connection to the ancient world. Her argument takes her readers through a comprehensive tour of monsters on film and television, from the much-loved creations of Ray Harryhausen in Clash of the Titans to the monster of the week in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, before looking in detail at the afterlives of the Medusa and the Minotaur. She develops a broad theory of the ancient monster and its life after antiquity, investigating its relation to gender, genre and space to offer a bold and novel exploration of what keeps drawing us back to these mythical beasts. From the siren to the centaur, all monster lovers will find something to enjoy in this stimulating and accessible book.

Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture

Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture PDF Author: Liz Gloyn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350114340
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
What is it about ancient monsters that popular culture still finds so enthralling? Why do the monsters of antiquity continue to stride across the modern world? In this book, the first in-depth study of how post-classical societies use the creatures from ancient myth, Liz Gloyn reveals the trends behind how we have used monsters since the 1950s to the present day, and considers why they have remained such a powerful presence in our shared cultural imagination. She presents a new model for interpreting the extraordinary vitality that classical monsters have shown, and their enormous adaptability in finding places to dwell in popular culture without sacrificing their connection to the ancient world. Her argument takes her readers through a comprehensive tour of monsters on film and television, from the much-loved creations of Ray Harryhausen in Clash of the Titans to the monster of the week in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, before looking in detail at the afterlives of the Medusa and the Minotaur. She develops a broad theory of the ancient monster and its life after antiquity, investigating its relation to gender, genre and space to offer a bold and novel exploration of what keeps drawing us back to these mythical beasts. From the siren to the centaur, all monster lovers will find something to enjoy in this stimulating and accessible book.

Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture

Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture PDF Author: Liz Gloyn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781350122581
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
"What is it about ancient monsters that popular culture still finds so enthralling? Why do the monsters of antiquity continue to stride across the modern world? In this book, the first in-depth study of how post-classical societies use the creatures from ancient myth, Liz Gloyn reveals the trends behind how we have used monsters since the 1950s to the present day, and considers why they have remained such a powerful presence in our shared cultural imagination. She presents a new model for interpreting the extraordinary vitality that classical monsters have shown, and their enormous adaptability in finding places to dwell in popular culture without sacrificing their connection to the ancient world. Her argument takes her readers through a comprehensive tour of monsters on film and television, from the much-loved creations of Ray Harryhausen in Clash of the Titans to the monster of the week in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, before looking in detail at the afterlives of the Medusa and the Minotaur. She develops a broad theory of the ancient monster and its life after antiquity, investigating its relation to gender, genre and space to offer a bold and novel exploration of what keeps drawing us back to these mythical beasts. From the siren to the centaur, all monster lovers will find something to enjoy in this stimulating and accessible book."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth

The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth PDF Author: Debbie Felton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192650440
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth presents forty chapters about the unique and terrifying creatures from myths of the long-ago Near East and Mediterranean world, featuring authoritative contributions by many of the top international experts on ancient monsters and the monstrous. The first part provides original studies of individual monsters such as the Chimaera, Cerberus, the Hydra, and the Minotaur, and of monster groups such as dragons, centaurs, sirens, and Cyclopes. This section also explores their encounters with the major heroes of classical myth, including Perseus, Jason, Heracles, and Odysseus. The second part examines monsters of ancient folklore and ethnography, encompassing the restless dead, blood-drinking lamiae, exotic hybrid animals, the so-called dog-headed men, and many other unexpected creatures and peoples. The third part covers various interpretations of these creatures from multiple perspectives, including psychoanalysis, colonialism, and disability studies, with monster theory itself evident across the entire volume. The final part discusses reception of these ancient monsters across time and space--from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to modern times, from Persia to Scandinavia, the Caribbean, and Latin America-and concludes with chapters considering the use and adaptation of ancient monsters in children's literature, science fiction, fantasy, and modern scientific disciplines. This Handbook is the first large-scale, inclusive guide to monsters in antiquity, their places in literature and art across the millennia, and their influence on later literature and thought.

Gothic Remixed

Gothic Remixed PDF Author: Megen de Bruin-Molé
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350103063
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Longlisted for the 2022 International Gothic Association's Allan Lloyd Smith Prize The bestselling genre of Frankenfiction sees classic literature turned into commercial narratives invaded by zombies, vampires, werewolves, and other fantastical monsters. Too engaged with tradition for some and not traditional enough for others, these 'monster mashups' are often criticized as a sign of the artistic and moral degeneration of contemporary culture. These hybrid creations are the 'monsters' of our age, lurking at the limits of responsible consumption and acceptable appropriation. This book explores the boundaries and connections between contemporary remix and related modes, including adaptation, parody, the Gothic, Romanticism, and postmodernism. Taking a multimedia approach, case studies range from novels like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series, to television programmes such as Penny Dreadful, to popular visual artworks like Kevin J. Weir's Flux Machine GIFs. Megen de Bruin-Molé uses these monstrous and liminal works to show how the thrill of transgression has been contained within safe and familiar formats, resulting in the mashups that dominate Western popular culture.

Monsters in Greek Literature

Monsters in Greek Literature PDF Author: Fiona Mitchell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000392597
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Monsters in Greek literature are often thought of as creatures which exist in mythological narratives, however, as this book shows, they appear in a much broader range of ancient sources and are used in creation narratives, ethnographic texts, and biology to explore the limits of the human body and of the human world. This book provides an in-depth examination of the role of monstrosity in ancient Greek literature. In the past, monsters in this context have largely been treated as unimportant or analysed on an individual basis. By focusing on genres rather than single creatures, the book provides a greater understanding of how monstrosity and abnormal bodies are used in ancient sources. Very often ideas about monstrosity are used as a contrast against which to examine the nature of what it is to be human, both physically and behaviourally. This book focuses on creation narratives, ethnographic writing, and biological texts. These three genres address the origins of the human world, its spatial limits, and the nature of the human body; by examining monstrosity in these genres we can see the ways in which Greek texts construct the space and time in which people exist and the nature of our bodies. This book is aimed primarily at scholars and students undertaking research, not only those with an interest in monstrosity, but also scholars exploring cultural representations of time (especially the primordial and mythological past), ancient geography and ethnography, and ancient philosophy and science. As the representation of monsters in antiquity was strongly influential on medieval, renaissance, and early modern images and texts, this book will also be relevant to people researching these areas.

Monsters and Monarchs

Monsters and Monarchs PDF Author: Debbie Felton
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477323066
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Jack the Ripper. Jeffrey Dahmer. John Wayne Gacy. Locusta of Gaul. If that last name doesn’t seem to fit with the others, it’s likely because our modern society largely believes that serial killers are a recent phenomenon. Not so, argues Debbie Felton—in fact, there’s ample evidence to show that serial killers stalked the ancient world just as they do the modern one. Felton brings this evidence to light in Monsters and Monarchs, and in doing so, forces us to rethink the assumption that serial killers arise from problems unique to modern society. Exploring a trove of stories from classical antiquity, she uncovers mythological monsters and human criminals that fit many serial killer profiles: the highway killers confronted by the Greek hero Theseus, such as Procrustes, who tortured and mutilated their victims; the Sphinx, or “strangler,” from the story of Oedipus; child-killing demons and witches, which could explain abnormal infant deaths; and historical figures such as Locusta of Gaul, the most notorious poisoner in the early Roman Empire. Redefining our understanding of serial killers and their origins, Monsters and Monarchs changes how we view both ancient Greek and Roman society and the modern-day killers whose stories still captivate the public today.

Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames

Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames PDF Author: Ross Clare
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135015721X
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This volume presents an original framework for the study of video games that use visual materials and narrative conventions from ancient Greece and Rome. It focuses on the culturally rich continuum of ancient Greek and Roman games, treating them not just as representations, but as functional interactive products that require the player to interpret, communicate with and alter them. Tracking the movement of such concepts across different media, the study builds an interconnected picture of antiquity in video games within a wider transmedial environment. Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames presents a wide array of games from several different genres, ranging from the blood-spilling violence of god-killing and gladiatorial combat to meticulous strategizing over virtual Roman Empires and often bizarre adventures in pseudo-ancient places. Readers encounter instances in which players become intimately engaged with the “epic mode” of spectacle in God of War, moments of negotiation with colonised lands in Rome: Total War and Imperium Romanum, and multi-layered narratives rich with ancient traditions in games such as Eleusis and Salammbo. The case study approach draws on close analysis of outstanding examples of the genre to uncover how both representation and gameplay function in such “ancient games”.

The American Villain

The American Villain PDF Author: Richard A. Hall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 144086988X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
The American Villain: Encyclopedia of Bad Guys in Comics, Film, and Television seeks to provide one go-to reference for the study of the most popular and iconic villains in American popular culture. Since the 1980s, pop culture has focused on what makes a villain a villain. The Joker, Darth Vader, and Hannibal Lecter have all been placed under the microscope to get to the origins of their villainy. Additionally, such bad guys as Angelus from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows have emphasized the desire for redemption—in even the darkest of villains. Various incarnations of Lucifer/Satan have even gone so far as to explore the very foundations of what we consider "evil." The American Villain: Encyclopedia of Bad Guys in Comics, Film, and Television seeks to collect all of those stories into one comprehensive volume. The volume opens with essays about villains in popular culture, followed by 100 A–Z entries on the most notorious bad guys in film, comics, and more. Sidebars highlight ancillary points of interest, such as authors, creators, and tropes that illuminate the motives of various villains. A glossary of key terms and a bibliography provide students with resources to continue their study of what makes the "baddest" among us so bad.

thersites 17

thersites 17 PDF Author: Amanda Potter
Publisher: Universitätsverlag Potsdam
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
thersites is an international open access journal for innovative transdisciplinary classical studies edited by Annemarie Ambühl, Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Christian Rollinger and Christine Walde. thersites expands classical reception studies by publishing original scholarship free of charge and by reflecting on Greco-Roman antiquity as present phenomenon and diachronic culture that is part of today’s transcultural and highly diverse world. Antiquity, in our understanding, does not merely belong to the past, but is always experienced and engaged in the present. thersites contributes to the critical review on methods, theories, approaches and subjects in classical scholarship, which currently seems to be awkwardly divided between traditional perspectives and cultural turns. thersites brings together scholars, writers, essayists, artists and all kinds of agents in the culture industry to get a better understanding of how antiquity constitutes a part of today’s culture and (trans-)forms our present. thersites appears twice yearly and publishes regular issues as well as specially-themed and guest-edited issues focused on individual subjects and questions. Call for papers are released regularly and long in advance on our homepage (https://thersites-journal.de/) and on other pages that feature announcements for classical studies (APA, Mommsen-Gesellschaft etc.).

Gender, Creation Myths and their Reception in Western Civilization

Gender, Creation Myths and their Reception in Western Civilization PDF Author: Lisa Maurice
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350212849
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This volume offers an instructive comparative perspective on the Judaic, Christian, Greek and Roman myths about the creation of humans in relation to each other, as well as a broad overview of their enduring relevance in the modern Western world and its conceptions of gender and identity. Taking the idea that the way in which a society regards humanity, and especially the roots of humanity, is crucial to an understanding of that society, it presents the different models for the creation and nature of mankind, and their changing receptions over a range of periods and places. It thereby demonstrates that the myths reflect fundamental continuities, evolutions and developments across cultures and societies: in no context are these more apparent than with regard to gender. Chapters explore the role of gender in Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian creation myths and their reception traditions, demonstrating how perceptions of 'male' and 'female' dating back to antiquity have become embedded in, and significantly influenced, subsequent perceptions of gender roles. Focusing on the figures of Prometheus, Pandora, Adam and Eve and their instantiations in a broad range of narratives and media from antiquity to the present day, they examine how variations on these myths reflect the concerns of the societies producing them and the malleability of the stories as they are recast to fit different contexts and different audiences.