The Decline and Revival of Classical Mythology

• explain why knowledge of/interest in classical mythology waned following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
• explain how Virgil "eased the process of assimilating mythic material into the Christian worldview."
• discuss Dante's adaptation of Book 6 of Virgil's Aenid.
• explain why the Courtly Love tradition sparked a revived interest in Ovid's Art of Love.

The Later Uses of Classical Mythology

After studying this section of the chapter you should be able to identify contemporary uses of figures and images from classical mythology.

Methods of Transmission

• identify the four most frequent ways in which mythic material is transmitted to contemporary audiences.
• discuss the emergence of translation in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
• use the revenge of Orestes and Electra to show that adaptations and revisions of extant myths were common even in ancient Greece and Rome.
• trace the evolution of the "mini-industry of mythological dramas" from the Renaissance to the 20^th century.
• use Anouilh's revision of Antigone to discuss the nature of these revisions or "updatings."
• draw on the examples of Ottavio Rinuccini and Claudio Monteverdi to explain how "the invention of opera itself may be traced to a desire to revive Greek drama in its "original" form."
• identify the major literary and filmic adaptations of Greek myth, from Shakespeare to the Coen Brothers.
• recognize examples of mythic themes and images in the works of artists, writers, and composers (i.e. the paintings of Claude Lorraine, the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, etc.).
• describe and cite examples of the ways in which authors have used extended mythic themes as a means of depicting the human experience of an individual protagonist.
• explain why writers such as Freud and Camus have used mythic figures to represent whole theories or concepts.

Myth and Cultural History

• explain how historians "study the various revisions [of myth] as barometers of cultural change."
• discuss the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as it has been adapted to fit the needs of greatly varying (sub) cultures.
• identify the "shift from Baroque to neoclassical sensibility" by comparing Rubens' and Poussin's depiction of the rape of the Sabine women.
• draw on specific examples to discuss "the many interpretations of Venus... [which] provide an extended illustration of changes in taste, style, and vision."