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The Survival of Myth: Innovation, Singularity and Alterity
Editor: Paul Hardwick and David Kennedy
Date Of Publication: Jul 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2158-2
Isbn: 1-4438-2158-6
What are myths and what are they for? Myths are stories that both tell us how to live and remind us of the inescapability and pull of the collective past. The Survival of Myth: Innovation, Singularity and Alterity explores the continuing power of primal stories to inhabit our thinking. An international range of contributors examine a range of texts and figures from the Bible to Cormac McCarthy and from Thor to the Virgin Mary to focus on the way that ancient stories both give access to the unconscious and offer individuals and communities personae or masks. Myths translated and recreated become, in this sense, very public acts about very private thoughts and feelings. The subtitle of the book, ‘Innovation, Singularity and Alterity,’ reflects the way in which the history of cultures in all genres is a history of innovation, of a search for new modes of expression which, paradoxically, often entails recourse to myth precisely because it offers narratives of singularity and otherness which may be readily appropriated. The individual contributors offer testament to the continuing significance of myth through its own constant metamorphosis, as it both reflects and transforms the societies in which it is (re)produced.
Dr Paul Hardwick is Reader in English at Leeds Trinity and All Saints, UK. He is co-editor, with Sandra Hordis, of Medieval English Comedy (Brepols, 2007) and publishes widely on medieval art and literature, and nineteenth and twentieth century medievalisms. A monograph, English Misericords and the Margins of Meaning, is forthcoming from Boydell and Brewer.
Dr David Kennedy is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Hull, UK. He is the author of Douglas Dunn (2008) and Elegy (Routledge New Critical Idiom, 2007). A study of ekphrasis in contemporary British poetry is forthcoming from Ashgate.
“Myths are stories of transformation which enable cultures to explore and propagate new forms of identity, whether through nationalist narratives of power and appropriation, or through ambivalent and transgressive icons of sexual and religious power. This collection of essays is a very welcome contribution to this rich field, re-energizing the study of myths as a tool for the analysis of the representations that channel cultural change.”
— Prof Adam Piette, University of Sheffield ‘Myth continues to exert a pull on contemporary culture because, as this book argues, it thrives on innovation and imagination, always succeeding in somehow being contemporary. The essays here amply illustrate just how diverse, yet significant, the role of myth continues to be. In particular, myth’s irreducibility, along with its narratives of singularity and alterity, compel us to pay attention and perhaps enable us to get the measure of our own culture(s).’ — Prof Steven Earnshaw, Sheffield Hallam University
Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99
Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)
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