Α Kaleidoscope of Mythical Beasts, Beyond Time and Space: Keys to Understanding Oneself and Culture
Marciniak, K. (Ed.). (2020). Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture. Universitätsverlag Winter.
Abstract
The paper aspires to provide a critical presentation of the content of the Chasing Mythical Beasts: The Reception of Ancient Monsters in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture collective volume, edited by Katarzyna Marciniak (2020), and an interpretative framing for the recurrent emergence of mythical beasts in literature and other media for children and young people. Famous mythical monsters – the Minotaur, Medusa, Pegasus, centaurs, and sirens – reappear either in their original form or in other versions in a wide range of stories, becoming a vehicle for critical reflections over a variety of subjects, like the encounter with the Other, the coming of age, the female power, totalitarianism, ethical dilemmas, or human relationships, to mention some of them. Monsters’ diffusion in almost all cultural fields highlights their universality, recognisability, popularity, and flexibility to adjust to requirements and priorities of all times and spaces. Their inexhaustible potential remains to be further explored.
Keywords
children’s and young adult culture; classical reception studies; Graeco-Roman mythology; interdisciplinarity; intercultural intersections; Katarzyna Marciniak; mythical beasts
References
Ahmed, M. (2019). Monstrous imaginaries: The legacy of romanticism in comics. University Press of Mississippi.
Axer, J., & Kieniewicz, J. (2020). The Wobo’s itinerary: There and back again. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 401–418). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Bodart, J. R. (2012). They suck, they bite, they eat, they kill: The psychological meaning of supernatural monsters in young adult fiction. Scarecrow Press.
Borowska, M. (2020). The awakening of the κνώδαλα, or inside a Great Fish Belly. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 419–428). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Burton, M. E. (2020). Man as creature: Allusions to classical beasts in N. D. Wilson’s Ashtown Burials. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 377–386). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Burton, S. J. G. (2020). A Narnian “Allegory of Love”: The Pegasus in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 357–373). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Christie, L. (2020). The evolution of monsters in children’s literature. Palgrave Communications, 6, 41. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0414-7.
Cixous, H. (1976). The laugh of the Medusa (K. Cohen & P. Cohen, Trans.). Signs, 1(4), 875–893.
Clasen, M. (2012). Monsters evolve: A biocultural approach to horror stories. Review of General Psychology, 16(2), 222–229. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027918.
Deacy, S. (2020). “From the shadows”: Goddess, monster, and girl power in Richard Woff’s Bright-Eyed Athena in the stories of Ancient Greece. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 177–195). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Dominas, K. (2020). The internet and popular culture: The reception of mythical creatures in the context of multimedia and interactive materials for children. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 539–555). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Ermolaeva, E. (2020). Centaurs in Russian fairy tales: From the half-dog Pulicane to the centaur Polkan. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 327–337). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Freud, S. (1955). The ‘Uncanny.’ In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XVII (1917–1919): An Infantile Neurosis and other works (J. Strachey, Trans., A. Freud, Collab., A. Strachey & A. Tyson, Assist., pp. 219–252). The Hogarth Press, The Institute of Psycho-Analysis. (Original work published 1919).
Gilmore, D. D. (2012). Monsters: Evil beings, mythical beasts, and all manner of imaginary terrors. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Gloyn, L. (2020). Mazes intricate: The Minotaur as a catalyst of male identity formation. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 99–119). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Gould, C. (1886). Mythical monsters. W. H. Allen.
Hale, E. (2020). Facing the Minotaur in the Australian labyrinth: Politics and the personal in Requiem for a Beast. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 157–173). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Hall, E. (2020). Cheiron as youth author: Ancient example, modern responses. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 301–326). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Hardwick, L., & Stray, C. (Eds.). (2011). A companion to classical receptions. Wiley-Blackwell.
Hardwick, L. (2003). Reception studies. Oxford University Press.
Hodkinson, O. (2020). “She’s not deadly. She’s beautiful”: Reclaiming Medusa for millennial tween and teen girls? In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 197–222). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Iten, G. H., Steinemann, S. T., & Opwis, K. (2018). Choosing to help monsters: A mixed-method examination of meaningful choices in narrative-rich games and interactive narratives. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 341, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173915.
Janka, M., & Stierstorfer, M. (2020). Semibovemque virum semivirumque bovem: Mythological hybrid creatures as key fairy-tale actors in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and postmodern fantasy literature and media for children and young adults. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 121–140). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Jerzak, K. (2020). Remnants of myth, vestiges of tragedy: Peter Pan in the mermaids’ lagoon. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 267–280). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Kordos, P. (2020). Familiar monsters: Modern Greek children face the Minotavros, Idra, and Kerveros. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 141–156). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Kostecka, W., & Skowera, M. (2020). Womanhood and/as monstrosity: A cultural and individual biography of the ‘Beast’ in Anna Czerwińska-Rydel’s Bałtycka syrena [The Baltic Siren]. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 247–265). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. (2020). On the trail of Pan: The blending of references to Classical Antiquity and Romanticism in J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 283–300). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Lamb, D. S. (1900). Mythical monsters. American Anthropologist, 2(2), 277–291. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1900.2.2.02a00050.
Landis, J. (2011). Monsters in the movies: 100 years of cinematic nightmares. Dorling Kindersley.
Lovatt, H. (2020). Fantastic beasts and where they come from: How Greek are Harry Potter’s mythical animals? In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 449–470). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Łukaszewicz, A. (2020). Fantastic creatures seen by a Shipwrecked Sailor and by a Herdsman. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 429–437). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Marciniak, K. (Ed.). (2020a). Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture. Universitätsverlag Winter.
Marciniak, K. (2020b). Chasing mythical Muppets: Classical Antiquity according to Jim Henson. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 557–600). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Marciniak, K. (2020c). What is a (classical) monster? The metamorphoses of the be(a)st friends of childhood. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 25–52). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Maurice, L. (2015). Children, Greece and Rome: Heroes and eagles. In L. Maurice (Ed.), The reception of Ancient Greece and Rome in children’s literature: Heroes and eagles (pp. 1–14). Brill.
Moula, E. (2011). Mythical retellings and implicit meta-narratives in children’s literature: The divergence between the already said and the re-said as a subversive mechanism of the dominant Western meta-ethics and as a tool of critical revision of the present. International Journal of Humanities, 9(3), 127–141. https://doi.org/10.18848/1447-9508/CGP/v09i03/43153.
Moula, E. (2012). Aischylika ichni sti laiki koultoura. Metaschimatismoi kai chriseis thematon kai motivon tis Oresteias sta komiks. In Aischylos, o dimiourgos tis tragodias (pp. 191–211). Katarti.
Moula, E., & Malafantis, K. (2019). Homer’s Odyssey: From classical poetry to threshold graphic narratives for dual readership. Journal of Literary Education, 2, 52–70. https://doi.org/10.7203/JLE.2.13779.
Murnaghan, S., & Roberts, D. H. (2020). “A Kind of Minotaur”: Literal and spiritual monstrosity in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 55–74). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Nkemleke, D. A., & Neba, C. D. (2020). Human categories in oral tradition in Cameroon. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 387–399). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Naish, D. (2016). Hunting monsters: Cryptozoology and the reality behind the myths. Arcturus.
Olechowska, E. (2020). New mythological hybrids are born in bande dessinée: Greek myths as seen by Joann Sfar and Christophe Blain. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 473–495). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Paulouskaya, H. (2020). Mythical beasts made Soviet: Adaptation of Greek mythology in Soviet animation of the 1970s. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 497–520). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Poole, W. S. (2011). Monsters in America: Our historical obsession with the hideous and the haunting. Baylor University Press.
Potter, A. (2020). Bringing classical monsters to life on BBC Children’s Television: gorgons, minotaurs, and sirens in Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Atlantis. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 521–538). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Puetz, B. (2020). “What will happen to our honour now?”: The reception of Aeschylus’ Erinyes in Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 223–245). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Richardson, E. (Ed.). (2019). Classics in extremis: The edges of classical reception. Bloomsbury.
Roberts, D. H., & Murnaghan, S. (2020). Picturing duality: The Minotaur as beast and human in illustrated myth collections for children. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 75–97). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Sucharski, R. A. (2020). Stanisław Pagaczewski and his tale(s) of the Wawel Dragon. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 439–448). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Švelch, J. (2013). Monsters by the numbers: Controlling monstrosity in video games. In Levina, M., & Bui, D.-M. T. (Eds.). Monster culture in the 21st century: A reader (pp. 193–208). Bloomsbury Academic.
Thaidigsmann, K. (2020). (Non-)Flying horses in the Polish People’s Republic: The crisis of the mythical beast in ambivalent Polish children’s literature. In K. Marciniak (Ed.), Chasing mythical beasts: The reception of ancient monsters in children’s and young adults’ culture (pp. 339–356). Universitätsverlag Winter.
Hellenic Open University Greece
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9694-4924
Evangelia Moula – PhD, postdoctoral researcher, works in secondary education and teaches at the Hellenic Open University (Greece). Her research interests include children’s literature, digital culture, and critical literacy in education. Contact: moula.evangelia@ac.eap.gr.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Open Access Policy
All articles presented on the pages of ”Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura” are published in open access under a Creative Commons license - Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). It means that:
- they can be made available and quoted under the condition of explicit and clear indication of the author/authors of the referenced text;
- you cannot use legal or technological means that would limit others in using the text under the terms of the license.
More information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/