The Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture

The Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture PDF Author: Mary J. Magoulick
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 149683707X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Honorable Mention for the 2022 Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize awarded by the Women's Section of the American Folklore Society Goddess characters are revered as feminist heroes in the popular media of many cultures. However, these goddess characters often prove to be less promising and more regressive than most people initially perceive. Goddesses in film, television, and fiction project worldviews and messages that reflect mostly patriarchal culture (included essentialized gender assumptions), in contrast to the feminist, empowering levels many fans and critics observe. Building on critiques of other skeptical scholars, this feminist, folkloristic approach deepens how our remythologizing of the ancient past reflects a contemporary worldview and rhetoric. Structures of contemporary goddess myths often fit typical extremes as either vilified, destructive, dark, and chaotic (typical in film or television); or romanticized, positive, even utopian (typical in women’s speculative fiction). This goddess spectrum persistently essentializes gender, stereotyping women as emotional, intuitive, sexual, motherly beings (good or bad), precluded from complex potential and fuller natures. Within apparent good-over-evil, pop-culture narrative frames, these goddesses all suffer significantly. However, a few recent intersectional writers, like N. K. Jemisin, break through these dark reflections of contemporary power dynamics to offer complex characters who evince “hopepunk.” They resist typical simplified, reductionist absolutes to offer messages that resonate with potential for today’s world. Mythic narratives featuring goddesses often do, but need not, serve merely as ideological mirrors of our culture’s still problematically reductionist approach to women and all humanity.

The Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture

The Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture PDF Author: Mary J. Magoulick
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 149683707X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Get Book

Book Description
Honorable Mention for the 2022 Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize awarded by the Women's Section of the American Folklore Society Goddess characters are revered as feminist heroes in the popular media of many cultures. However, these goddess characters often prove to be less promising and more regressive than most people initially perceive. Goddesses in film, television, and fiction project worldviews and messages that reflect mostly patriarchal culture (included essentialized gender assumptions), in contrast to the feminist, empowering levels many fans and critics observe. Building on critiques of other skeptical scholars, this feminist, folkloristic approach deepens how our remythologizing of the ancient past reflects a contemporary worldview and rhetoric. Structures of contemporary goddess myths often fit typical extremes as either vilified, destructive, dark, and chaotic (typical in film or television); or romanticized, positive, even utopian (typical in women’s speculative fiction). This goddess spectrum persistently essentializes gender, stereotyping women as emotional, intuitive, sexual, motherly beings (good or bad), precluded from complex potential and fuller natures. Within apparent good-over-evil, pop-culture narrative frames, these goddesses all suffer significantly. However, a few recent intersectional writers, like N. K. Jemisin, break through these dark reflections of contemporary power dynamics to offer complex characters who evince “hopepunk.” They resist typical simplified, reductionist absolutes to offer messages that resonate with potential for today’s world. Mythic narratives featuring goddesses often do, but need not, serve merely as ideological mirrors of our culture’s still problematically reductionist approach to women and all humanity.

The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture

The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture PDF Author: Justin Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136337873
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary collection brings together world leaders in Gothic Studies, offering dynamic new readings on popular Gothic cultural productions from the last decade. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: contemporary High Street Goth/ic fashion, Gothic performance and art festivals, Gothic popular fiction from Twilight to Shadow of the Wind, Goth/ic popular music, Goth/ic on TV and film, new trends like Steampunk, well-known icons Batman and Lady Gaga, and theorizations of popular Gothic monsters (from zombies and vampires to werewolves and ghosts) in an age of terror/ism.

Mythology in Our Midst

Mythology in Our Midst PDF Author: Amy T. Peterson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313052859
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Though nearly everyone is familiar with such great mythological figures as Hercules, Icarus, and Medusa, one may wonder what relevance these ancient characters, and their stories, hold for modern readers. This unique reference book brings mythology to life for students by exploring the connections between ancient myths and contemporary culture. An introductory essay sets the tone with its overview of the myriad areas of human endeavors—including the arts, science, psychology, language and literature, consumer products, and other aspects of popular culture—that mythology has influenced. The user-friendly volume is comprised of 50 narrative essays that trace the cultural connections and offer a lively retelling of each myth. For example, readers will discover the derivation of Freudian psychoanalysis from the myth of Oedipus, and fans of popular film and fiction may be surprised to learn the mythological inspirations for works like Beauty and the Beast, The Matrix, or Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead. This engrossing book is enhanced with 25 original illustrations. Five fact-filled appendices offer glossaries and interesting mythological etymologies of commonplace words in nature, science, and everyday consumer products like Nike shoes and Olympus cameras. Whether for research or pure enjoyment, this accessible and informative book reveals the many unrecognized references to mythology that impact our lives.

Contemporary Fiction and Christianity

Contemporary Fiction and Christianity PDF Author: Andrew Tate
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441164960
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book provides a detailed exploration of the spiritual and religious contexts and subtexts of contemporary fiction.

The Image of God in an Image Driven Age

The Image of God in an Image Driven Age PDF Author: Beth Felker Jones
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 083089960X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Whether on the printed page, the television screen or the digital app, we live in a world saturated with images. Some images help shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us in positive ways, while others lead us astray and distort our relationships. Christians confess that human beings have been created in the image of God, yet we chose to rebel against that God and so became unfaithful bearers of God's image. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus, who is the image of God, restores the divine image in us, partially now and fully in the day to come. The essays collected in The Image of God in an Image Driven Age explore the intersection of theology and culture. With topics ranging across biblical exegesis, the art gallery, Cormac McCarthy, racism, sexuality and theosis, the contributors to this volume offer a unified vision—ecumenical in nature and catholic in spirit—of what it means to be truly human and created in the divine image in the world today. This collection from the 2015 Wheaton Theology Conference includes contributions by Daniela C. Augustine, Craig L. Blomberg, William A. Dyrness, Timothy R. Gaines and Shawna Songer Gaines, Phillip Jenkins, Beth Felker Jones, Christina Bieber Lake, Catherine McDowell, Ian A. McFarland, Matthew J. Milliner, Soong-Chan Rah and Janet Soskice, as well as original poems by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner and Brett Foster.

The Artemis Archetype in Popular Culture

The Artemis Archetype in Popular Culture PDF Author: Susan Redington Bobby
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786478462
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Many female figures in recent fiction, film, and television embody the Artemis archetype, modeled on the Greco-Roman goddess of the hunt. These characters are often identified as heroines and recognized as powerful and progressive pop icons. Some fit the image of the tough, resourceful female in a science fiction or fantasy setting, while others are more relatable, inhabiting a possible future, a recent past, or a very real present. Examining both iconic and lesser-known works, this collection of new essays analyzes the independent and capable female figure as an ideal representation of women in popular culture.

The History of the Kingdom of God, Part I: From Creation to Parousia

The History of the Kingdom of God, Part I: From Creation to Parousia PDF Author: Sofia Cavalletti
Publisher: Liturgy Training Publications
ISBN: 1618330543
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
The History of the Kingdom of God I: Creation to Parousia is a revision by Sofia Cavalletti of her earlier work, History's Golden Thread, a core text in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Another core text, Living Liturgy, has also been revised and will be the second volume, The History of the Kingdom of God II: Liturgy and the Building of the Kingdom. Together, these two volumes offer the reader insight into Scripture and Liturgy as the means to understand God's plan of salvation history, from the creation of the world, through redemption by the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, to its culmination in the Parousia, when God will be all in all. While this first volume is essential reading for all catechists of the Good Shepherd, anyone who studies the Bible and who seeks to understand God's revelation through sacred history will be enlightened and inspired by Cavalletti's insights and scholarship. According to Rebekah Rojcewicz, the translator of both the original volume and this revision, and also a catechist herself, this revised edition is "even more essential, … a fruit of Cavalletti's more than fifty years of patient observation of and work with children in the atrium…. Essentiality is one of the strongest spiritual characteristics of even the youngest children, and it is also one of the most severe disciplines for most adults. In this book, the less is truly more, for it enables us to more readily detect the "golden thread," the plan of God that binds together the whole history of salvation.

Religion and Popular Culture

Religion and Popular Culture PDF Author: Richard W. Santana
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476627088
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Often considered to be in opposition, American popular culture and popular religion are connected, forming and informing new ways of thinking, writing and practicing religion and theology. Film, television, music, sports and video games are integral to understanding the spiritual, the secular and the in-between in the modern world. In its revised second edition, this book explores how religious issues of canonicity, scriptural authority, morality, belief and unbelief are worked out not in churches, seminaries or university classrooms, but in our popular culture. Topics new to this edition include lived religion, digital technology, new trends in belief and identification, the film Noah (2014), the television series True Blood, Kanye West’s music, the video game Fallout and media events of recent years. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

God's Englishwomen

God's Englishwomen PDF Author: Hilary Hinds
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719048876
Category : Authorship
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This book offers a detailed study of the spiritual autobiographies and prophecies produced by Quaker, Baptist and Fifth Monarchist women, and asks how such a proliferation of texts was produced in a culture dismissive of women's writing.

Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Helen Morales
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191579335
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
From Zeus and Europa, to Diana, Pan, and Prometheus, the myths of ancient Greece and Rome seem to exert a timeless power over us. But what do those myths represent, and why are they so enduringly fascinating? Why do they seem to be such a potent way of talking about our selves, our origins, and our desires? This imaginative and stimulating Very Short Introduction goes beyond a simple retelling of the stories to explore the rich history and diverse interpretations of classical myths. It is a wide-ranging account, examining how classical myths are used and understood in both high art and popular culture, taking the reader from the temples of Crete to skyscrapers in New York, and finding classical myths in a variety of unexpected places: from arabic poetry and Hollywood films, to psychoanalysis, the bible, and New Age spiritualism. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.