Re-Embroidering the Robe : Faith, Myth and Literary Creation since 1850

Religious faith, myths and legends have always been present in literature. However, their role has changed over time. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, with the diminishing role of religion in European society, writers with some kind of belief system, whether religious or political, have tended to use myth in two different ways.They have either retold the old, familiar myths of the past so that they carry fresh messages relevant to a contemporary audience or created their own, new myths as modern vehicles of traditional truths. Many writers have combined the two techniques.Such is the transforming artistry which the eighteen essays in Re-Embroidering the Robe examine: the remaking or new-minting of myth, in literature from 1850 to the present day, so that what it embodies and expresses speaks powerfully to the modern reader. In widely differing ways, therefore, all of the texts analysed here compel attention. pt. 1. Myth and faith in fictions of childhood and adolescence: Introduction / Adrienne E. Gavin The wizard of Oz: myth for an age of progress / J. Jackson Barlow Nordic mythology in C.S. Lewis's The chronicles of Narnia / Daniel Warzecha Creating national mythology and its reflections in contemporary children's literature / Mari Niitra The clew of her story: female myth-making in Margaret Mahy's The tricksters / Adrienne E. Gavin Of maidens and dragons: Sara Maitland's Three times table / Deborah Sarbin pt. 2. Myth and the Christian author: Introduction / Suzanne Bray J.R.R. Tolkien's "Eucatastrophe," or fantasy as a modern recovery of faith / Joanny Moulin Mediaeval myth and modern narrative: Dante's myth of heaven and hell and Charles Williams' Descent into hell / Robert-Louis Abrahamson Jesting in earnest: levity and faith in George MacDonald's The light princess / Daniel Gabelman Myth, fact and "literary belief": imagination and post-empiricism in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien / Rod Rosenquist Temptations for the times in the mythical rewritings of British Christian authors 1933 to 1945 / Suzanne Bray Incarnation as meta-narrative in Flannery O'Connor's short stories / Isabelle Boof-Vermesse pt. 3. Mythology revisited: Introduction / Peter Merchant The goddess and the underworld in modernism: Marguerite Yourcenar's Feux / Evans Lansing Smith Making it new: changing form and function in modern myth / Bradford Haas "In the goddess's name": symbolist and modernist revisions of the Aphrodite myth / Nora Clark The cult of Dionysus in the work of W.B. Yeats / Elizabeth Muller "Breathed on by the rural Pan": the atmosphere of Arcadia in Giono's Regain / Peter Merchant God's death and subsequent resurrection from Faust to Apocalypto / Jacques Coulardeau Unity among the stars: faith and reason in Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives / David Waterman. Religious faith, myths and legends have always been present in literature. However, their role has changed over time. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, with the diminishing role of religion in European society, writers with some kind of belief system, whether religious or political, have tended to use myth in two different ways. They have either retold the old, familiar myths of the past so that they carry fresh messages relevant to a contemporary audience or created their own, new ..