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Greek myths have managed to hold their grip on human sensitivity through the ages, and have provided the Western (and Westernized) cultures with perennial tools for self-analysis. Still today, ‘Know Thyself,’ the commandment inscribed on the temple of Apollo in Delphi, quietly presents humanity with a colossal challenge. This course aims to examine how Greek mythology resonates in three postmodern novels of great beauty and complexity, where creatures of Ancient Greece are transplanted into contemporary American society and invested with new meaning. In The Centaur, John Updike blends the myth of Chiron, the noblest Centaur, with the story of a father and a son left alone in a blizzard. John Barth’s Chimera reinterprets the tales of Perseus, who slay the snake-haired creature Medusa, and of Bellerophon, who rode the winged horse Pegasus. In Fury, Salman Rushdie’s ‘American’ novel, the Erynies, black goddesses of wrath and revenge, hover and scream over a dystopian New York.
The seminar will attempt to answer questions such as: How does Ancient Greece influence the perception of today’s Greece? How do Greek myths resonate in contemporary America? Is it still possible to think of the Greek civilization as the ‘cradle’ of Western civilization? |
