A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology presents a collection of essays that explore a wide variety of aspects of Greek and Roman myths and their critical reception from antiquity to the present day.* Reveals the importance of mythography to the survival, dissemination, and popularization of classical myth from the ancient world to the present day* Features chronologically organized essays that address different sets of myths that were important in each historical era, along with their thematic relevance* Features chronologically organized essays that address different sets of myths that were important in each historical era, along with their thematic relevance* Offers a series of carefully selected in-depth readings, including both popular and less well-known examples

Notes on Contributors ixIntroduction 1Vanda ZajkoPart I Mythography 131 Greek Mythography 15Robert L. Fowler2 Roman Mythography 29Gregory Hays3 Myth and the Medieval Church 43James G. Clark4 The Renaissance Mythographers 59John Mulryan5 Bulfinch and Graves: Modern Mythography as Literary Reception 75John Talbot6 Myth Collections for Children 87Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts7 Contemporary Mythography: In the Time of Ancient Gods, Warlords, and Kings 105Ika WillisPart II Approaches and Themes 1218 Circean Enchantments and the Transformations of Allegory 123Greta Hawes9 The Comparative Approach 139Sarah Iles Johnston10 Revisionism 153Lillian Doherty11 Alchemical Interpretations of Classical Myths 165Didier Kahn12 Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism: On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India 179Phiroze Vasunia13 The Golden Age 193Andreas T. Zanker14 Matriarchy and Utopia 213Peter DaviesPart III Myth, Creativity, and the Mind 22915 The Half?]Blood Hero: Percy Jackson and Mythmaking in the Twenty-First Century 231Joanna Paul16 Myth as Case Study 243Heather Tolliday17 Mythical Narrative and Self?]Development 257Meg Harris Williams18 Finding Asylum for Virginia Woolf 's Classical Visions 271Emily PillingerPart IV Iconic Figures and Texts 28519 Orpheus and Eurydice 287Genevieve Liveley20 Narcissus and Echo 299Rosemary Barrow21 Prometheus, Pygmalion, and Helen: Science Fiction and Mythology 311Tony Keen22 Dionysus in Rome 323Fiachra Mac Góráin23 Cupid and Psyche 337Julia Haig Gaisser24 Constructing a Mythic City in the Book of the City of Ladies: A New Space for Women in Late Medieval Culture 353Kathryn McKinley25 Francis Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients: Between Two Worlds 367John Channing Briggs26 Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus 379Jeanne Nuechterlein27 Ancient and Modern Re?]sounding: Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria 391George Burrows28 Shelley Prometheus Unbound 407Michael O'Neill29 George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion 419Helen Slaney30 Camus and the Myth of Sisyphus 433Kurt Lampe31 Creative Strategies: Lars von Trier's Medea 447Mette Hjort32 Regarding the Pain of Others with Marsyas: On Tortures Ancient and Modern 463Lisa SaltzmanIndex 475