Search

Myth may be a source of hope for children and young adults, but children may themselves be envisioned as myth’s best hope: fresh readers whose engagement with stories grantsthose storiescontinuing life.This hope is at the heart of the “Save the Story” series, in which noted authors rewrite literary works for children. Two books in the series retell ancient myths: Yiyun Li’sThe Story of Gilgameshand Ali Smith’sThe Story of Antigone.Both writers produce stories they hope will help their readers grow into admirable adults. Li recasts Gilgamesh as a child, his journey glossed as progress towards adult understanding; Smith uses animal intermediaries and flashes of irreverence to temper a story she presents as terrible yet nourishing. Their hope is that readers will so value stories that have made them who they are that they will in turn perpetuate those stories, keeping them safe from oblivion.

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

In his pioneering collections of Greek myths for children, A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1851) and Tanglewood Tales (1853), the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne combines two approaches to reworking the monsters and other supernatural elements of mythology. For his child readers, he treats these features literally and light-heartedly, producing a playful blend of magic and reality. For his adult readers (and with a view to the adults his child readers will become), he treats them metaphorically and seriously, as cautionary allegories of spiritual deformation; this approach is also reflected in the mythical allusions found in his works of fiction for adults. This paper examines the interplay of these two approaches, with particular attention to Hawthorne’s account of the myth of the Minotaur., 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 the project "Our Mythical Childhood… The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children's and Young Adults' Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges" is available at http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/

The monstrosity of the Minotaur lies chiefly in a hybridity that is the more uncanny because the body is (as a rule) human and the head is animal. Few retellings of this myth in anthologies for children, with the exception of Hawthorne’s in Tanglewood Tales, explore in any detail what it might mean to be both beast and human, or try to complicate the boundary between the two. Writers typically set out the basic dichotomy (part bull, part man) and in some instances introduce a few additional scary details (lion’s teeth, red eyes, foaming mouth). But the many artists who have illustrated these retellings have had to decide how to represent, combine and balance the Minotaur’s human and animal characteristics, where to draw or blur the line between the two halves, and how frightening to make him, given an audience of children. This chapter examines the deployment of posture and facial expression, of hands, feet, and hooves, of nakedness, hair, and clothing, and the resulting ef ects of horror, pathos, and comedy in the illustration history of this myth for children., 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/