Founder and Editor-in-Chief Ananta Ch. Sukla Vishvanatha Kaviraja Institute A 42, Sector-7, Markat Nagar Cuttack, Odisha, India : 753014 Email: [email protected] Tel: 91-0671-2361010 Editor Associate Editor Asunción López-Varela Richard Shusterman Faculty of Philology Center for Body, Mind and Culture University of Complutense Florida Atlantic University Madrid 28040, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton Spain Florida - 33431-0991, U.S.A. Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Editorial Board W.J.T. Mitchel University of Chicago David Damrosch Harvard University Alexander Huang Massachusetts Institue of Technology Garry Hagberg Bard College John Hyman Qeen’s College, Oxford Meir Sternberg Tel Aviv University Grazia Marchiano University of Siena David Fenner University of North Florida Roger Ames University of Hawaii George E. Rowe University of Oregon Sushil K. Saxena University of Delhi Susan Feagin Temple University Peter Lamarque University of York Brigitte Le Luez Dublin City University Deborah Weagel University of New Mexico John MacKinnon University of Saint Mary Osayimwense Osa Virginia State University All editorial communications, subscriptions, books for review/ notes, papers for publication are to be mailed to the editor at the address mentioned above. Editorial Assistants : Bishnu Dash ([email protected]) : Sanjaya Sarangi ([email protected]) Technical Assistant : Bijay Mohanty ([email protected]) JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS Volume : 40.2 : 2017 Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics A Special Issue in The Eternal Return of Myth: Myth updating in Contemporary Literature Guest - Editors Ana González-Rivas Fernández & Antonella Lipscomb A VISHVANATHA KAVIRAJA INSTITUTE PUBLICATION www.jclaonline.org http://www.ucm.es/siim/journal-of-comparative-literature-and-aesthetics ISSN: 0252-8169 CONTENTS Felicitations on the 75th Birthday of the Founding Editor Prof. A.C. Sukla Acknowledgements Obituary Ana González-Rivas Fernández 01-06 Introduction Antonella Lipscomb José Manuel Losada 07-10 Preface: The Myth of the Eternal Return Lorna Hardwick 11-26 Myth, Creativity and Repressions in Modern Literature: Refigurations from Ancient Greek Myth Angel Ruiz Pérez 27-40 The anger of Achilles in The Iliad and of Francis Marion Tarwater in Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away Leon Burnett 41-52 Ariadne, Theseus, and the Circumambulation of the Mythic Self Metka Zupančič 53-66 Literature, Mythology, Orphism: “Language as God” in the French Nouveau Roman Brigitte Le Juez 67-80 The Eternal Return Interrupted: the evolution of the myth of Cythera until today Francisco Molina-Moreno 81-101 Aleksandr Skrjabin, the Russian Orpheus Martina Treu 102-122 Ulysses’s Journey and Homer’s Odyssey: An Eternal Return Christos Angelis 123-134 Reconfiguring the Garden of Eden: suspended temporality in Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers Left Alive” Penelope-Foteini Kolovou 135-150 Penelope weaving the (F)e-mail: texting and sexting Sara Molpeceres 151-168 The Zombie: a new myth in the making. A political and social metaphor Elisabeth S. Weagel 169-186 Religious Rites and Female Spirituality in Cinematic Adaptations of Cinderella María Ibáñez Rodríguez 187-198 Selected Bibliography:Myth updating in Contemporary Literature Book Received Journals Received Typesetting at GUDU DTP, F/626, Sector-7, Markat Nagar, Cuttack Printed and Bound at Jagannath Process Pvt. Ltd., Cuttack BLANK This issue felicitates the 75th Anniversary of Prof. Ananta Charan Sukla, the Founding Editor of the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics Born November, 1942 Felicitations Professor Ananta Sukla has worked tirelessly to bring forth scholarship, particularly interdisciplinary scholarship, to the academic world on an international level. He is not only professional but also kind, considerate, and compassionate. It has been an honor and privilege for me to work with him and participate as a contributing scholar for some of his many projects. Deborah FillerupWeagel, PhD (The University of New Mexico) Roger Scruton once remarked that the defence of humane education requires the defence of philosophy, but that philosophy can only be defended if it has aesthetics at its heart. For his exemplary contribution to sustaining the richness and extending the reach of aesthetic inquiry, Ananta Sukla deserves our respect and gratitude. On the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, and in recognition of a long and distinguished career, I am happy to send my warmest congratulations. John E. MacKinnon, PhD (Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) The world of Comparative Literary Studies and Aesthetics remains indebted to Prof. Ananta Sukla for his huge contributions to the disciplines. Among his many projects, in 1978 Prof. Sukla established The Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, in collaboration with René Wellek, Harold Osborne, MirceaEliade, John Fisher, Monroe Beardsley, John Hospers, or Meyer Abramsamong other founding figures. This biannual publication is one of the oldest ongoing journals on Comparative Literature. My wish is that the journal continues to grow and enlighten people all over the world under Prof. Sukla’s careful supervision. Asunción López-Varela, PhD (President of the European Society of Comparative Literature ESCL-SELC) BLANK ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume has been funded by the “Acis & Galatea. Research Project in Cultural Myth Criticism” (S2015/HUM-3362), led by professor José Manuel Losada (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), and is part of the academic activities carried out by the group research “SIIM: Research and Social Innovation”, led by professor Asunción López-Varela. We would like to give special thanks to professors Losada and López-Varela, for their support and advice in the edition of this volume, as well as to professor Ananta Charan Sukla, who, as chief editor of the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, put at our disposal all the necessary means to make this publication possible. We also feel very grateful to all the contributors to this volume, whose careful and meticulous work has been essential for this project to come to light. As editors of this volume, we hope this collection of articles helps to shed more light on the concept of eternal return and to gain a deeper understanding of the complex processes through which myths are reshaped in modern times. OBITUARY Prof. Denis Dutton (9 February 1944 – 28 December 2010) Founder Editor of Philosophy and Literature University of Canterbury, New Zealand Prof. Ralph Cohen (1918 – 2017) Founder Editor of New Literary History Unveristy of Virgina, USA Introduction ANA GONZÁLEZ-RIVAS FERNÁNDEZ ANTONELLA LIPSCOMB Since the moment we are born, our lives are shaped by an eternal return. The passing of the seasons, growing of vegetables, and the constant succession of birth and death are some of the definite proofs that we live in an ever-lasting cyclical state. Even mistakes are repeated once and again since, as is commonly known, man is the only animal who trips twice over the same stone. The eternal return is a double-edged sword: it can be perceived as a blessing that ensures Persephone’s meeting with her mother and the earth’s annual blossom; but it can also turn into an extremely cruel punishment, a stone that comes down again and again regardless of the efforts invested into rolling it up to the top of a hill, as Sisyphus knows well. Nietzsche, in turn, proposes us to see the eternal return as a challenge and the only awareness that ultimately leads to a real liberation of the human being: The heaviest weight. - What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine. ‘ If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, ‘Do you want this again and innumerable times again?’ would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for no thing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? (Nietzsche, The Gaia Science, 1887, 273-274) Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, Vol.40.2 : 2017 The eternal return still both fascinates and baffles scholars from all over the world, who witness how the myth acquires multiple forms as new narrative modes appear. As a response to this phenomenon, all the articles collected in this volume try to analyse the various implications of the eternal return in modern times, covering the perspective of different nationalities as well as the expression it takes in different disciplines. In her article “Myth, Creativity and Repressions in Modern Literature: Refigurations from Ancient Greek Myth”, Lorna Hardwick reflects on the plasticity of the myth as manifested in works such as Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad (2005) and Derek Walcott’s The Odyssey: A Stage Version (1993). As Hardwick pinpoints, these new versions of the ancient myths of Penelope and Odysseus, respectively, reveal certain elements that remained concealed in the Greek texts, namely Penelope’s guilt or the perspective of the maidens, victims of Odysseus’ rage. Other works, such as Tony Harrison’s film poem The Gaze of the Gorgon, emerge as examples of new memoryism, that resorts to myth as a tool to explore the darkest chapters of human History –in this case, the World War I.