Written by Kateri Hoy. Every great story comes with great side characters. They help drive the plot and teach the main protagonist lessons along the way. In my Thrice Told Tales class, we’ve read many such stories – my favorite being Vergil’s The Aeneid. This story tells of the epic origins of the Roman Empire…
Category: Features
History of the Vampire: Its Themes and Motifs
Written by Roland McGurr. If asked to consider the vampire, most people would imagine the portrait of the vampire that was popularized and immortalized in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula: a humanoid figure with an aristocratic air and something registering to an onlooker as not-quite-right, whether in disposition or features. The traits that may begin…
The Devil (Dante) Knows
Lucifer is an infamous figure, and writers imagine him in a stunning range of ways. Dante Alighieri’s take on the devil is seen in his medieval work Inferno, which explores nine circles of hell, culminating in the last, in which Dante sees Lucifer face to face. With how well-known Inferno is, one might expect Dante’s…
Arthurian Women Revised: Steinbeck’s Women as Masculine & Feminine
The tales of King Arthur and his knights are some of the most well-known stories around the world, subject to many interpretations and adaptations, with one of the best adaptations being that of John Steinbeck, author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Having admired Sir Malory’s arthurian tales as a child, Steinbeck began…
Wax Wings
Why Icarus? Written by Emily McCullough The first time I read the myth of Icarus, my heart broke. I love the story; I thought it was beautiful imagery, and it spoke to me as a writer. Something about the idea of wishing so hard to achieve, only to melt and quickly fall away from it…
The Starry One: A Modern Look at a Monster
As with many monsters, the mythology surrounding the Minotaur goes far deeper than the hero’s quest to kill it. The story of Crete’s monstrous prince, given the name Asterion (“The Starry One”) in some sources, also entwines with several other widely popular mythological figures. The Minotaur’s mother, Queen PasiphaĂ«, is a part of the same…
The Inventor, the Prisoner, and the Wax Wings
Hubris is one of many Greek words that have carried into common modern use, but to the Ancient world, the concept of hybris was more than just misplaced confidence. In its earliest uses, the word referred to “the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade,” and was considered a crime in Archaic and Classical…
The Hero, The Princess, and the God of Ecstasy
“What marvel that the horns of a monster were betrayed by his sister, when the twisted path was revealed by the gathering of her thread.” Propertius, Elegies 4.4 (trans. Goold) The earliest literary records of the hero Theseus come from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, composed around the 8th century BCE. The legendary founder and king…
The King, the Witch, and the Sacred Bull
“Crete rising out of the waves; PasiphaĂ«, cruelly fated to lust after a bull, and privily covered; the hybrid fruit of that monstrous union—the Minotaur, a memento of her unnatural love.” Virgil, Aeneid (trans. Day-Lewis) As all good legends must, the mythic cycle of Knossos takes place in a palace rife with treachery. Many of…
The Birthplace of Legend
The island of Crete is the birthplace of millennia of mythology. As the stepping stone between Africa and Europe, European civilization began on the narrow island, both literally and mythologically. According to legend, the first inhabitants on the island sprang from Zeus’ coupling with Europa, who gave the continent her name. Looking to the archaeological…