Mythology and Folklore

This book examines the far-reaching legacy of one of the great myths of classical antiquity. According to Greek legend, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, secretly buried her brother in defiance of the orders of Creon, King of Thebes. Creon sentenced Antigone to death, but, before the order could be executed, she committed suicide. The theme of the conflict between Antigone and Creon — between the state and the individual, between young and old, between men and women — has captured the Western imagination for more than 2,000 years. Antigone and Creon are as alive in the politics and poetics of our own day as they were in ancient Athens. Here, the book examines the treatment of the Antigone theme in Western art, literature and thought, leading us to look again at the unique influence Greek myths exercised on 20th-century culture.

The presentation of the magical and mantic in Celtic literature has persistently been dogged by misunderstanding and over-romanticised readings. Among the misconceptions about the ancient and medieval Celtic peoples, the notion of a specifically ‘Celtic’ astrology remains widespread in the popular mind. This study aims to counter such myth-making, and to demonstrate how a number Irish and Welsh literary writers in the medieval and Early Modern period conceived of portents in the heavens — comets, blood-coloured moons, darkened suns — and what they knew of the complex art of astrology. The book examines the dissemination of concepts of portents and the science of the stars on the Celtic fringe from a literary perspective. A central concern is to provide an examination of the classes of people represented as expert in the interpretation of celestial portents: the early Irish annal-writer, the literary druid, the seer, the mythical prophet Merlin, and the learned Welsh poet of the late Middle Ages and beyond.

This book describes and analyses the enduring interest in the last of the race through investigation into different treatments by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. The analysis is influenced by both literary expressions and extensive reading of the historical accounts, diaries, and newspaper reports of individuals who have represented the last of their kind. Fictional and real-life accounts of last men and women were compared and found to be enlightening. The biography of Pu Yi or the history of St Kilda may also help explain novels, such as The Last Man by Mary Shelley, and provide insights into the psychology of the sole survivor and the social significance of the unique symbols. More insights into a literary figure, such as James Macpherson's Ossian (the last of Fingal's race), could be derived from the Reminiscences of Michael O'Guiheen (the last poet of the Great Blasket Island) more so than from a lot of academic woks. This literature presents an excellent example of the now unclear boundaries between fact and fiction, since the author's recollections of the Great Blasket Island community are interspersed with literary allusions to the Oisin of Irish legend. The growth of the last of the race is traced in this book from the Restoration period, when traditional Christian views of human destiny started to diminish, to the late 19th century, when new racial ending patterns had arisen following evolutionary and thermodynamic theories.

This book suggests that the Old English poem Beowulf was composed between the reigns of Kings Beornwulf (823-6) and Wiglaf (827-9 and 830-39) of Mercia, in the winter of 826-7, in the monastery of Breedon on the Hill in NW Leicestershire, by Abbot Eanmund (ruled 814x816-c.848). The premise seems clear enough in the Beowulf–Wiglaf sequence in the last fifth of Beowulf. With Old Norse analogues, Beowulf's kinship with Hygelac, friendship with Hrothgar, interest in Freawaru, later role as king and kinship with ‘Wiglaf’ are all argued to be the poet's invention, one fashioned partly on the model of Vergil's Aeneid, while the sequence of big names in the Geatish part of Beowulf, Offa of Angeln – Hygelac – Beowulf – Wiglaf, is taken to be a reference to leaders of Mercia: Offa – Cenwulf – Beornwulf – Wiglaf. Three tales from Viking mythology are presented as sources for morally defining moments in the poem. Beowulf's death and Wiglaf's uncrowned status at the end are used to date Beowulf to between 826, when Beornwulf died in battle, and 827, when the historical Wiglaf took over from an intermediary named Ludeca. It is concluded that Beowulf was Wiglaf's propaganda for succession, a requiem for Beornwulf from the man who wished to rule after him; that Wiglaf cast himself as his own ancestor; and that, in the words Eanmundes laf (‘Eanmund's legacy’, line 2611), nine lines after introducing Wiglaf (line 2602, head of Fitt XXXVI), the poet leaves us his signature.