Our Mythical Hope. The Ancient Myths as Medicine for the Hardships of Life in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture (PDF)

Classical Antiquity is a particularly important field in terms of “Hope studies” […]. For centuries, the ancient tradition, and classical mythology in particular, has been a common reference point for whole hosts of creators of culture, across many parts of the world, and with the new media and globalization only increasing its impact. Thus, in our research at this stage, we have decided to study how the authors of literary and audiovisual texts for youth make use of the ancient myths to support their young protagonists (and readers or viewers) in crucial moments of their existence, on their road into adulthood, and in those dark hours when it seems that life is about to shatter and fade away. However, if Hope is summoned in time, the crisis can be overcome and the protagonist grows stronger, with a powerful uplifting message for the public. […] Owing to this, we get a chance to remain true to our ideas, to keep faith in our dreams, and, when the decisive moment comes, to choose not hatred but love, not darkness but light.
Katarzyna Marciniak, University of Warsaw, From the introductory chapter

Keywords: hope, youth, childhood, life difficulties, mythology.

The publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Poland license (CC BY 3.0 PL) (full license available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/legalcode).

See other publications from the series: Our Mythical Childhood »

The book is to be recommended for academics as well as graduate and postgraduate students working on the reception of Classical Antiquity and its transformations around the world.
David Movrin, University of Ljubljana

Our Mythical Hope is the latest collection of articles by scholars participating in an ongoing collaboration to ensure that the beauty and profundity of Classical myth remain known, and (hopefully) remain part of our modern culture. The size of this compendium, the sweep of subjects considered, the involvement of leading experts from around the world, all testify to how important and extensive this initiative has become over the last decade. The project’s continued commitment to engage all ages, especially the young, and to extend its outreach beyond the Academy merely, makes it a leading model for how research retains its relevance.
Mark O’Connor, Boston College

Marguerite Johnson
“For the Children”: Children’s Columns in Australian Newspapers during the Great War – Mythic Hope, or Mythic Indoctrination?
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.145-158

Marciniak Katarzyna, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8083-3253
“I Found Hope Again That Night…”: The Orphean Quest of Beauty and the Beast
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.669-720

Rachel Bryant Davies
“This Is the Modern Horse of Troy”: The Trojan Horse as Nineteenth-Century Children’s Entertainment and Educational Analogy
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.89-130

Krzysztof Rybak, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8018-2622
All Is (Not) Lost: Myth in the Shadow of the Holocaust in Bezsenność Jutki [Jutka’s Insomnia] by Dorota Combrzyńska-Nogala
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.629-644

Divine Che Neba
Daniel A. Nkemleke
Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons and Osiris Rising as Pan-African Epics
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.413-432

Jan Kieniewicz, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3580-9112
Bandar-Log in Action: The Polish Children’s Experience of Disaster in Literature and Mythology
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.159-178

Elżbieta Olechowska, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5708-3834
Between Hope and Destiny in the Young Adult Television Series Once Upon a Time, Season 5, Episodes 12–21 (2016)
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.593-612

Anna Mik
Et in (Disney) Arcadia ego: In Search of Hope in the 1940 Fantasia
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.577-592

Michael Stierstorfer
From an Adolescent Freak to a Hope-Spreading Messianic Demigod: The Curious Transformations of Modern Teenagers in Contemporary Mythopoetic Fantasy Literature (Percy Jackson, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Syrena Legacy)
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.219-230

Ayelet Peer
Growing Up Manga Style: Mythological Reception in Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s Arion Manga
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.555-576

Markus Janka
Heracles/Hercules as the Hero of a Hopeful Culture in Ancient Poetry and Contemporary Literature and Media for Children and Young Adults
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.231-250

Susan Deacy
Hercules: Bearer of Hope for Autistic Children?
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.251-274

N. J. Lowe
How to Become a Hero
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.193-210

Helen Lovatt
Hungry and Hopeful: Greek Myths and Children of the Future in Mike Carey’s Melanie Stories
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.491-510

Katerina Volioti
Images of Hope: The Gods in Greek Books for Young Children
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.531-554

Robert Sucharski, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7708-7173
Joe Alex (Maciej Słomczyński) and his Czarne okręty [Black Ships]: A History of a Trojan Boy in Times of the Minoan Thalassocracy
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.211-218

Prof. dr hab. Jerzy Axer, http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9588-7940
Kotick the Saviour: From Inferno to Paradise with Animals
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.613-628

Krishni Burns
La Fontaine’s Reeds: Adapting Greek Mythical Heroines to Model Resilience
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.327-344

Elizabeth Hale
Mystery, Childhood, and Meaning in Ursula Dubosarsky’s The Golden Day
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.451-470

Katarzyna Jerzak
Myth and Suffering in Modern Culture: The Discursive Role of Myth from Oscar Wilde to Woodkid
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.131-144

Simon Burton
Marilyn E. Burton
Mythical Delight and Hope in C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and Chronicles of Narnia
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.179-192

Sheila Murnaghan
Deborah H. Roberts
New Hope for Old Stories: Yiyun Li’s Gilgamesh and Ali Smith’s Antigone
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.345-370

Owen Hodkinson
Orphic Resonances of Love and Loss in David Almond’s A Song for Ella Grey
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.645-668

Edith Hall
Our Greek Tragic Hope: Young Adults Overcoming Family Trauma in New Novels by Natalie Haynes and Colm Tóibín
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.371-387

Lisa Maurice
Percy Jackson and Israeli Fan Fiction: A Case Study
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.511-530

Véronique Dasen
Playing with Life Uncertainties in Antiquity
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.71-88

Edoardo Pecchini
Promoting Mental Health through the Classics: Hercules as Trainer in Today’s Labours of Children and Young People
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.275-326

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
The Utopia of an Ideal Community: Reconsidering the Myth of Atlantis in James Gurney’s Dinotopia: The World Beneath
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.433-450

Hanna Paulouskaya
Turning to Myth: The Soviet School Film Growing Up
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.387-412

Marciniak Katarzyna, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8083-3253
What Is Mythical Hope in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture? – or: Sharing the Light
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.11-46

Babette Puetz
When Is a Robot a Human? Hope, Myth, and Humanity in Bernard Beckett’s Genesis
https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323552888.pp.471-490