Ancient Myth in the Contemporary World
Ancient Myth in the Contemporary World

Author(s): Agata Mikołajko
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The main aim of the article is to present selected casus of the contemporary realizations of ancient myths in the context of fidelity and infidelity in Wit Szostak’s Zagroda zębów and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. The two novellas are more than mere re-interpretations of the Odyssey story (or rather stories). The comparison of the motif of Homer’s The Odyssey in the above novellas shows that they are regarded as infidèles, but contrariwise – considering the various aspects and versions of the Odyssey’s myth immersed in ancient culture and literature, they are fidèles. The form of literary expression is certainly renewed, but the plot in both cases is the transposition of the ancient Odyssey’s themes. An interesting interpretative context for Zagroda zębów and The Penelopiad has been put forward by Piotr Sadkowski, that is, the context of migration literature in the Odyssey’s reactualizations, especially one of its elements, namely, the “imagined spacetime, where the cultures and languages coexist in hybrid narrative identity.” The subject of the article allows for the classification of the analyzed works as the translational refractions of the ancient myths. One of the pillars of European identity is ancient culture, either Greek or Roman. Representatives of Manipulation School, or rather the cultural turn in Translation Studies, Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere connect translation theory with cultural credentials. From such a perspective, cultural heritage can be one of the fundamental metaphorical languages. It is the myriad thesaurus, being derived to art, literature, cinema, etc. regardless of historical, political, social, and linguistic circumstances. The subsequent concretizations not only translate ancient ramifications but also modernize them, and in such a modernization it is possible to perceive the reflections of contemporary philosophical, literary, cultural, political ideas and phenomena, that is, at the same time they are modernized as fidèles-infidèles translations.

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