The Remythologization of the Trojan War in Postmodern Literature

The myths of Ancient Greece are a huge cultural stratum, which still stirs the minds of not only historians and archaeologists, but also writers and poets. This article focuses on the representation of the Trojan War in postmodern literature. The current research objectives are to consider the representation of the Trojan War in world literature ranging from classical and medieval literature to contemporary postmodern literature, to analyse David Gemmell’s Troy trilogy within the framework of reimagining the myth of the Trojan War in postmodern literature. The subject of research is David Gemmell’s Troy Series and a number of the literary works of world literature in which the ancient myths of the Trojan War are represented to a greater or lesser extent. In the paper, we have used the cultural-historical and comparative-typological methods. The most detailed account of the events of the Trojan War is contained in The Iliad and The Odyssey. In the XIX c., some French poets and writers turn to the Trojan myth. Based on the general trends traced in the formation of modern literature, the myth of the Trojan War is actively used by writers throughout the world. This myth is ambiguously embodied in the works of various postmodern authors. The genres of the postmodern interpretation of the Trojan War are quite diverse. They can be divided into pseudo-historical novels, adventure novels, women’s romantic novels, and fantasy fiction genre. In these novels, special attention is paid to the “humanization” of characters. In Gemmell’s Troy trilogy, all the demigods and legendary heroes are described from the human, realistic and even modern points of view. Despite the coincidence of the character traits between the mythological heroes and the characters of the Gemmell’s novels, the author interweaves the psychological features of the modern man with the images of ancient Greek characters. Therefore, the characters become more realistic. We can also see the feminist ideas in the novels. In the Western classical tradition, the authors paid particular attention to the outline of events, and it let the reader know about what emotional experience the characters had, and what internal changes occurred in them. However, many contemporary authors, reimagining the Trojan War period, focus on the inner world of the characters, their feelings and thoughts. We hope this paper will serve as a basis for further research on the process of remythologization in fiction.

миф, древнегреческая мифология, Троянская война, Илиада, Дэвид Геммел, ремифологизация, литература постмодернизма, мировая литература, интерпретация, образ

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