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Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Two Roads To Hell: Rebirth And Relevance In Musical Adaptations Of Katabatic Myth, Jarrod Deprado
Two Roads To Hell: Rebirth And Relevance In Musical Adaptations Of Katabatic Myth, Jarrod Deprado
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
The paper examines two myth-inspired musicals—The Frogs by Burt Shevelove and Stephen Sondheim and Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell—concerning journeys to the underworld that benefit society. Both musicals undergo adaptation and revision processes that reflect the political and social concerns of the day. The Frogs depicts Dionysus’ journey to Hades to bring back a poet (originally Euripides, now George Bernard Shaw). However, it was not until the 2004 Broadway adaptation that overtly anti-authoritarian messages were added, aimed at the Bush administration. As a “folk opera,” Hadestown retells Orpheus’ descent to the Underworld to rescue Euridice as a commentary on economic …
Orpheus And The Harrowing Of Hell In The Tale Of Beren And Lúthien, Giovanni Carmine Costabile
Orpheus And The Harrowing Of Hell In The Tale Of Beren And Lúthien, Giovanni Carmine Costabile
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Critics have observed that Beren and Lúthien’s tale is a Christian retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The “Harrowing of Hell” tradition is widespread in Italy as attested by the mosaic of San Marco among others, but it is in France that the Ovid Moralized reconnects it to Orpheus who descended into the Underworld to save Eurydice (an already late antique parallel) and therefore attests a happy ending version of the story that can be found in medieval England and also in various classical sources, perhaps even in the original legend of Orpheus. The apocryphal Harrowing is also …
Denial And Acceptance: A Core Myth Of Orpheus And Eurydice In The Modern Lyric, Brian O. Murdoch
Denial And Acceptance: A Core Myth Of Orpheus And Eurydice In The Modern Lyric, Brian O. Murdoch
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
The story of Orpheus’s failed attempt to bring Eurydice back from the dead is a frequently used theme in literature and in the modern lyric in particular, and it has been the subject of sometimes excessively complex critical attention. One core of the myth, however, is the need for the living to face and to accept the fact of the death of someone close to them. Modern lyrics in different European languages—the heirs to the classical myth—make clear how Orpheus’s attempt to bring his wife back from Hades was always impossible, and that his reaction was thus a form of …