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A girl holds the key to the future of mankind: she has to choose between sacrificing herself and creating a new human race. In one version she is Iphigenia, in another Pandora. Mike Carey (or M.R. Carey) has now produced three versions of this story, all of which follow the child character Melanie through horrific trauma, which she navigates with the help of Greek myth. The first was a short story called Iphigenia in Aulis which appeared in an anthology of dark fantasy school stories, called Apple for the Creature. This then developed into both a novel and a film script, both with the title Girl with All the Gifts, referring to the myth of Pandora that takes over from Iphigenia. None of these are written for children, but they play with the conventions and expectations of children’s literature, especially the short story with its school setting. They feature strong focalisation, simple words, a child protagonist, and a child’s perspective. But Melanie is not just a child. All three stories also feature strong language, violence, and intensely adult themes. The novel and film were particularly successful among young adult readers. The myths first emerge in the school room, where Melanie falls in love with them along with her teacher. They shape her identity as she struggles to understand her place in the world. Is she human or monster? Should she sacrifice herself and her kind, or carry out a generational coup? Greek myth, it seems, has quite a repertoire of characters who fear children at the same time as exploiting, even consuming them. This coming-of-age story shows a child setting the past in dialogue with the future in order to address some very big questions about what it means to be human and what it means to hope.

Classical Antiquity is a particularly important field in terms of “Hope studies” […]. For centuries, the ancient tradition, and classical mythology in particular, has been a common reference point for whole hosts of creators of culture, across many parts of the world, and with the new media and globalization only increasing its impact. Thus, in our research at this stage, we have decided to study how the authors of literary and audiovisual texts for youth make use of the ancient myths to support their young protagonists (and readers or viewers) in crucial moments of their existence, on their road into adulthood, and in those dark hours when it seems that life is about to shatter and fade away. However, if Hope is summoned in time, the crisis can be overcome and the protagonist grows stronger, with a powerful uplifting message for the public. […] Owing to this, we get a chance to remain true to our ideas, to keep faith in our dreams, and, when the decisive moment comes, to choose not hatred but love, not darkness but light. Katarzyna Marciniak, University of Warsaw, From the introductory chapter

This chapter explores the significance of mythical beasts in assessing the classical elements of J.K. Rowling's hugely successful series. It focuses on the semi-canonical Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them and looks at the variety of mythical material from a number of cultures, and then explores which of these mythical beasts play significant narrative roles in the novels themselves. How Classical are their representations? To what extent do the novels differ from the films in the degree of Classical reference? How do the Harry Potter movies draw on earlier fantasy movies with Classical themes? How much of a Classicist was Newt Scamander? How much does the search for obscure animals and knowledge about them parallel the experience of research and engagement with the ancient world in Rowling’s representations?, The volume gathers the results of a stage of the programme Our Mythical Childhood, supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Alumni Award for Innovative Networking Initiatives and an ERC Consolidator Grant. Open Access at Universitätsverlag Winter GmbH at https://www.winter-verlag.de/en/detail/978-3-8253-7874-5/Marciniak_Ed_Chasing_Mythical_Beasts_PDF/ book/ hardcover ISBN: 978-3-8253-6995-8 Series: Studien zur europäischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur/Studies in European Children's and Young Adult Literature, Volume No.: 8 Information about Our Mythical Childhood is available at http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/

This chapter addresses the question of the emotional functions of metalepsis: does narrative complexity intensify emotional engagement or make it bearable through moments of withdrawal? 6 How does metalepsis contribute to the representation of grief? Is there something metaleptic about intense emotion, especially grief, which can create a numbness or shock that separates the sufferer from a sense of reality?\ud The chapter begins with an examination of narrators and narrating in Aeneid 2. Both Aeneas and Sinon are fascinatingly complex narrators, who use their grief to establish authority and create a positive reception. This complexity encourages constant interplay between narrative levels, which creates dissonances for readers, but ultimately intensifies the emotional response of the various levels of audience. If Dido models Virgil’s ideal response, he was not intending to turn us off. The narrator’s constant presence, in counterfactuals that remind us we are in the pre-determined world of myth, the operation of hindsight which activates lament, and the irony more often associated with tragedy, do not alienate but draw us in.\ud The second section tackles narrative transition: ends of scenes and sequences and changes of setting are often characterized by emotional intensity and lack of narrative realism. Metalepsis often occurs at the edges of narrative, including problematization of the narrator’s knowledge of events, anachronism and focus on the narrator’s physical location. The chapter then examines the epic voice of Aeneas, beginning with similes, which also often feature at the ends of sections both as emotional high points and moments of self-conscious reflection for narrator and narratees. In many ways, Aeneas as narrator takes on the epic voice of the primary narrator, and Aeneas’ narrative as well as that of the primary narrator shows through the other narrative\ud levels.7 When Polites dies ante ora parentum (‘before the face of his fathers’) he is an image of the universality of epic death, and connects to Aeneas’ own desire to die in the storm of book 1. This tendency of epic to speak across time and space as well as audience levels is reinforced by puns and intertextual references, which one would expect to create distance, but which can also serve to enhance immediacy. Most strikingly of all, when Priam is described as a headless body on the shore, the author intrudes with a reference to contemporary Rome and Pompey’s death in the civil wars. This too claims the universality and contemporary relevance of mythic storytelling and seems likely to intensify engagement. Finally, I look briefly at Genette's phrase ‘Virgil “has Dido die”’ and how the death of Dido fits into these ideas about grief and narrative.

Equality and Diversity in Classics Report 2020

The visuality of Apollonius Argonautica is complex and fascinating, and important for understanding that of later Greek and Roman epic. The Argonautica features in The Epic Gaze as the epic that wouldn't, a refusenik of the epic genre, a counterexample. This chapter explores the particular visuality of Apollonius in more depth, by focusing on book 4 and its continuities and divergences from the previous books. In this chapter I re-examine gaze and vision in Apollonius by thinking about the difference between the explorers' gaze and the colonial gaze, between the outward journey and the return, between the Argonauts as objects and subjects. To what extent are the Argonauts a force for order, distinguishable from Herakles as a bringer of chaos? The chapter also re-evaluates the significance of the divine gaze in book 4, where it takes on a new prominence, and explore the epiphanies of book 4. Much of the action in book 4 takes place in darkness, and the chapter investigates the effects of this darkness. How does failure of the gaze relate to narrative control? How does the Argonautica's play with different levels of knowledge and information relate to its exploration of visuality? Finally, 'the gaze' may not necessarily be straightforwardly visual, and the chapter pursues the connection between vision and the other senses in Apollonius book 4.

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