Irene Berti

Filippo Carlà

A volume exploring modern receptions of ancient magic, religion and supernatural powers, heroes and deities in the visual and performing arts.

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts

Marta García Morcillo

The recent success of Hollywood blockbusters such as Troy, Alexander and 300 demonstrates how popular Greek antiquity still is and how well it can be marketed. Today as in the golden age of the peplum-genre, its myths, the Homeric heroes, the Attic tragedies, and - less frequently - historical personages such as Alexander the Great or the Spartan king Leonidas represent Hellas. The authors of this volume highlight the many and varied forms of the reception of ancient Hellas in the history of the cinema, from mythology to Roman Greece, from the era of silent films to the new millennium. In this, they are examining classic films, recent releases, and lesser known and often overlooked productions. Der jungste Erfolg von Hollywood-Blockbustern wie Troy, Alexander und 300 zeigt, wie medienwirksam sich die griechische Antike in Szene setzen lasst. Sowohl heute als auch im goldenen Zeitalter des peplums wird Hellas dabei vor allem durch seine Mythen, homerischen Helden, seine Tragodien und - etwas seltener - durch einzelne historische Figuren wie Alexander oder den Spartaner Leonidas reprasentiert. Die Autoren beleuchten die vielfaltigen Rezeptionsformen antiker griechischer Themen in der Filmgeschichte: von der Mythologie bis zum romischen Griechenland, von der Stummfilmzeit bis zum neuen Millennium. Dabei werden sowohl Klassiker, aktuelle Kinoerfolge als auch weniger bekannte Produktionen behandelt.

cinematic receptions of ancient history, literature and myth

Hellas on screen

Maria G. Castello

Carla Scilabra

The collected essays in this volume focus on the presentation, representation and interpretation of ancient violence – from war to slavery, rape and murder – in the modern visual and performing arts, with special attention to videogames and dance as well as the more usual media of film, literature and theatre. Violence, fury and the dread that they provoke are factors that appear frequently in the ancient sources. The dark side of antiquity, so distant from the ideal of purity and harmony that the classical heritage until recently usually called forth, has repeatedly struck the imagination of artists, writers and scholars across ages and cultures. A global assembly of contributors, from Europe to Brazil and from the US to New Zealand, consider historical and mythical violence in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus and the 2010 TV series of the same name, in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, in the work of Lars von Trier, and in Soviet ballet and the choreography of Martha Graham and Anita Berber. Representations of Roman warfare appear in videogames such as Ryse: Son of Rome and Total War, as well as recent comics, and examples from both these media are analysed in the volume. Finally, interviews with two artists offer insight into the ways in which practitioners understand and engage with the complex reception of these themes.

The Fear and the Fury

Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination

Filippo Carlà-Uhink

To what extent did mythological figures such as Circe and Medea influence the representation of the powerful 'oriental' enchantress in modern Western art? What role did the ancient gods and heroes play in the construction of the imaginary worlds of the modern fantasy genre? What is the role of undead creatures like zombies and vampires in mythological films? Looking across the millennia, from the distrust of ancient magic and oriental cults, which threatened the new-born Christian religion, to the revival and adaptation of ancient myths and religion in the arts centuries later, this book offers an original analysis of the reception of ancient magic and the supernatural, across a wide variety of different media – from comics to film, from painting to opera. Working in a variety of fields across the globe, the authors of these essays deconstruct certain scholarly traditions by proposing original interdisciplinary approaches and collaborations, showing to what extent the visual and performing arts of different periods interlink and shape cultural and social identities.

Katharina Bolle

Fanny Opdenhoff

Fabian Stroth

This edited volume includes a compilation of new approaches to the investigation of inscriptions from different cultural contexts. Innovative research questions about "material text cultures" are examined with reference to Classical Athens, late ancient and Byzantine churches and urban spaces, Hellenistic and Roman cities, and medieval buildings.

Irene Berti

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