Authority for citing mythological source material

Even Ovid is suspect.

“The popularity of mythology means that it is treated by innumerable websites; precisely this popularity means that many of these websites are created and maintained by people whose knowledge of the classics, and indeed of mythology, is far from perfect.”   
                                                 ——David M. Schaps, Handbook for Classical Research, 327

 Schaps' statement above will strike some as being awfully pedantic and classicizingly stuffy. It may not be comforting to this blog's reader(s) to learn that I endorse Schaps' view. With all due respect to the people who work hard at compiling those innumerable websites he mentions, I concur that it is important to keep one's eye on the classical texts from which classical mythology derives. And some knowledge of the classics is important for this. 

    In my opinion, any discussion of the reception of a classical myth should take into account the classical source(s) from which the myth is derived. Then, analysis should note the points of divergence from the classical source-myth and the modern reception of it. Where the versions differ, opportunities for analysis occur. 

   

    For studying the Reception of Classical Mythology, these resources are useful essential. Reception papers in the ClCv241 should rest upon these sources for authoritative statements of the source myths treated.

Reid, Jane Davidson. The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1990s. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.  — Great for reception; starts with authority; cites both classical sources and jumping-off points for scholarly research.

Moog-Grünewald, Maria, ed. The Reception of Myth and Mythology. Brill’s New Pauly, Supplements, 4. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. — Even stronger for reception, but more densely packed that OGCMA; next stop for researching reception of a myth, after Reid.

Simpson, Michael, trans. and comm. Gods and Heroes of the Greeks: the Library of Apollodorus. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976. — Apollodorus is critically important, but always worth second-guessing; Simpson’s notes help with that, and they often include very useful observations on intriguing receptions of classical myths.

Grimal, Pierre. Ed. and trans. by S. Kershaw and A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop. The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1990. — A quick guide worth sticking in your pocket anytime you go to a museum; I carry it on my iPad.

Graves, Robert. Introduction by R. Riordan. The Greek Myths. Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 2012. — Quirky, over-the-top erudite, infected by Cambridge ritualism, not nearly as sexy as the Penguin cover (or Riordan’s endorsement!) would have you believe.

Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. 8 vols. in 16 + index & supplements. Zürich: Artemis, c. 1981 -2009. — For reception per se perhaps less valuable; but for teaching that reception will ever be with us, this is da bomb. 

S1mOne: Andrew Niccol and Linda Hutcheon

Simone (technically: S1mOne, 2002) offers a usage of the Pygmalion myth that surprises with an overt endorsement of Linda Hutcheon's adaptation theory. Not an especially sophisticated narrative, the technologically fantastic film directed and written by Andrew Niccol has a defining moment that could qualify it as one of the most interesting of all Pygmalion films. 

The reader(s) of this blog may not agree with my hang-up on the presence of an overt, smoking-gun allusion to the classical myth being used in a given narrative adaptation; but I hope my insistence on finding the overt allusion to the source-myth in an a adapted texts is clear. I want to know that the creator of a classical mythological usage is aware of the source myth and not merely creating an archetypal cognate. (I.e. not every son with problematic father relationships is a big-O Oedipus, although such sons may manifest oedipal tendencies.) That awareness of conscious development of a myth Hutcheon calls "acknowledgement".

31 minutes into Simone, the prodigious cinemaste Victor Taransky (Al Pacino) is enjoying a domestic moment in a sunny kitchen with his precocious teenage daughter Laynie (Evan Rachel Wood). She is working on her laptop at the counter. Her activity on the laptop

A screen shot of S1mOne, 31:34, showing monitor
of Laynie's laptop Gérôme's Study for Pygmalion and
his Statue and text from theoi.com

manifests her knack for computer technology which she shares with her father and which will resolve the film's final crisis, albeit implausibly. Laynie's skill gets foregrounded by Dad in the moment. He notes that she works on her computer too much. What he can not notice in this apparently meaningless moment is that Laynie is writing something about Pygmalion on her computer. In a fleeting shot past Laynie's left shoulder, a POV 180 degree opposite to Victor's (whose hands are in a sudsy sink of dishes anyway), for less than one second of screen time, the viewer sees a fleet image of Jean-Léone Gérôme's "Study for Pygmalion and his Statue". The image is cropped somewhat from the original; but the figure of Pygmalion embracing his marble sculpture in the moment of her erotic vivification is readily recognizable. Because Laynie's fingers are tapping at her laptop's keyboard we assume that she is writing something. To the right of the cropped image, a text is momentarily visible: "Pygmalion saw these women waste their lives in wretched shame..." Laynie seems to have written a couple of paragraphs on this topic. In point of fact, the text that appears on Laynie's screen is the text describing Ovid's Pygmalion narrative at Metamorphoses 10 on the website theoi.com. Although Pygmalion thus enters our awareness, Laynie and her father do not discuss the myth. No oral reference to Pygmalion occurs, neither at this moment in the film nor elsewhere in the film. By entering the film this way, the narrative is rendered into an acknowledged usage of the Pgymalion myth.

We might have seen the Pygmalion myth coming. Taransky has reached a professional precipice with the shenanigans of Hollywood's prime donne (exemplified in the character of Winona Ryder as director Andrew Niccols' antithetical Niccola Anders). Rather than jump of the ledge, Taransky throughout the film makes use of a mysterious computer code proffered by a probable lunatic who pioneered a simulation so realistic that the fabricated actress would dupe all viewers into believing her to be a real actress on screen. Simone is a name shortened from Simulation One. In the hands of the consummate director, which Taransky must certainly be, this encoded actress comes from out of nowhere to win two Oscars for Best Actress in one year. Plausible? No. Pygmalion? Yes. That moment in the kitchen reads the Pygmalion myth formally and securely into the record. 

Promo poster for S1mOne (2002)

The film, by the way, bears a PG-13 rating. Nicolls' screenplay largely steers clear of suggesting that disturbing eroticized relationship Pygmalions often have with their Galateas in the Rezeptionsgeschichte. Moralizers in late antiquity and early Christianity castigated Pygmalion over their discomfort with his creation of what they took to be a marble doll crafted for playing out lurid perversions sordidly realized by Venus' animation of the girl made flesh. Ovid, introducing the myth for the first time into established Western literature, had done nothing to allay such judgmental readings of Pygmalion's motives. Ovid's sculptor has a physical relationship with his statue. That's sure. Pygmalions of our age seem always destined for the sack with their lovely creation. (E.g. Zoe Kazan's remarkable, but in this regard, utterly predictable Ruby Sparks.) Nicoll's digitized fantasy is mostly a pretty face. Taransky creates her as a facial amalgam of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Winona Ryder, and other gorgeous starletts. When he creates her voice, he throws in highlights of Bacall. Fawning entertainment reporters in the film observe that Simone bears resemblance to Sophia Loren; but the actress who plays Simone (Rachel Roberts) is statuesque more in the mode of early millennial Sports Illustrated models than from the Hollywood age of Loren. Taransky leads everybody in the film on to believe that he and Simone are romantically involved. When Taransky does interact with Simone below her neckline, he is mostly interested in clothing her with the right outfit for the moment. Not in disrobing her. Indeed, Taransky's involvement with Simone is asexual. Platonic. For he is creating the form of a woman. If anything, his actual love life improves as women — including his ex-wife — seem more turned on by his association with his famous, fictional fabrication. Niccol's Pygmalion is a creator who goes against today's grain, and not just because this is a family show.

Hutcheon's Theory of Adaptation (Routledge, 2006) defines an adaptation as an intertextual narrative that engages three principal matters: 

·      An acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or works

·      A creative and an interpretive act of appropriation/salvaging

·      An extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work

Therefore, an adaption is a derivation that is not derivative — a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing." (Hutcheon, 8-9)

Nobody who knows the Pygmalion myth will get very far into Simone without seeing the narrative as a Pygmalion adaptation. The elements of the zero-grade Pygmalion myth are all present and clearly developed: The artist despises the women in his society, so he creates an idealized woman as substitute for them; only superhuman intervention can personalize the creation and render it a reality. This is all true of Taransky, his spite for starletts, his fetishization of a bygone age, and his creation of a new girl endowed with perfect artistry. Yet, until the moment with Laynie and her laptop in the kitchen, when Gérôme's Pygmalion flashes on the screen (minute 31), the myth does not overtly achieve acknowledgement within the narrative. 

Niccol's screenplay takes a somewhat too clumsily orchestrated moment to read the Pygmalion myth purposefully into the narrative. It defines Hutcheon's element of acknowledgement. Once Pygmalion is recognizable by the creator's admission in the body of the narrative, the viewer is free to enjoy the creative and interpretive act of appropriation that takes place across the film. In other words, once we know that screenplay intends to adapt the Pygmalion myth, per se, the myriad choices the director makes in the film have particular bearing. 

So, is Simone a clever film? I tend to agree with the film's low scores on Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. The film is not especially clever in many of its choices. A 2002 filmmaker's assessment of tricky relationships between coddled actors and the studios makes for a worthwhile tale, a satire on the remnants of the studio system. As a manifestation of Adaptation, it is textbook. For manifesting the adaptor's penchant for acknowledging the mythological usage it follows, Niccol steps right into line.

#ogcma.byu.edu     Pygmalion  Ovid   Andrew Niccol    S1mOne   http://ogcma.byu.edu/Pygmalion2.0037_Niccol.htm

Two courses on the reception of classical mythology in Fall 2016

Dear Mythographers and other Friends,

    You might like to know about my F2016 courses:

 “Reception of Classical Myth in the Arts in the Modern Era” Clscs 490R/Clscs 690R. MW 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.   and "Studies in Themes and Types: The Eurydice Theme" CmpSt 640R M 8:00 — 10:45.

     The courses are intended to explore theoretical and practical issues pertaining to the reception and adaptation of classical myth in the arts — literature, cinema, opera, painting, sculpture, landscape,

orchestral, graphic novel, television, video game, whatever. In particular, we will look closely at reception of two mythological figures especially: Electra and Pygmalion in the one, Eurydice in the other.

ad for 2012 Perth Opera's Elektra (Strauss)

In our exploration, we will deliberate on what constitutes usage of a classical myth, a sometimes challenging enterprise.

   We will read classical mythological treatments, such as are found in Sophocles, Euripides, and Ovid, and then proceed to standard treatments of Electra and Pygmalion in representations such as Strauss’ Elektra, O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and so forth. Student contributions in this seminar will drive collective success; thus, I am loathe to dictate up front what the

parameters of our study will be. Once we establish the groundrules for the course, the direction will be subject to interesting twists and turns. Hundreds of usages of these myths are available for consideration.

Jean-Leon Gérôme's Pygmalion

           Please contact me with any questions you might have.

     macfarlane@byu.edu works most directly, but macfarlane241@gmail.com works, too.

Imaged here: Strauss’ Elektra, Gerôme’s Pygmalion and Galatea,
                   Miller’s (actually Bendis/Austen's) Elektra: Assassin, Lerner/Loewe’s My Fair Lady

Both these courses will allow me to explore matters pertaining to reception of classical myth with the students.
   The CmpSt 640R should have a broader base of theoretical readings, because the course should be pertinent to individuals from every walk of our program’s life. There ought to be more interdisciplinarity in that course.

Frank Miller developed
Elektra, but others have
adapted the character.

    The Clscs 690R will have some of that, but perhaps a good deal less than CmpSt 640R ought to have.
       Further, Clscs 690R will be taught in a room that is largely populated by undergraduates (I hope!) who are enrolled in the 4xx-level course.
In both I will be expanding my core articles for the eventual OGCMA-online project. The 690R course will involve the creation of two articles, while the CmpSt 640R will be more focused and result in the creation of only one article. See below.

Differences will be readily apparent in the topics approached. Beyond the theoretical groundwork, the Clscs course will explore the reception of both the Electra myth and the Pygmalion myth, while the CmpSt course will dig as deeply as we can into the Eurydice myth.
    In the Eurydice course (CmpSt 690R) I hope to sideline Orpheus as much as possible and look for interesting psychological developments of Eurydice in myth and the arts. She deserves her own scholarship, and artists have been exploring Eurydice for a long long time. Geoffrey Miles stated (erroneously, I believe) that Edward Dowden’s 1876 “Eurydice” is “perhaps the first serious attempt to give Eurydice a voice and to see the Orpheus-Eurydice relationship from her point of view.” (Miles, 126) Dowden post-dates the Orfeo by Gluck (libretto by Calzabigi, 1762), whose Euridice expresses her plaintive rather pathetically and takes matters into her own hands, by over a century. (Gluck Orfeo premiered 1762.) But Gluck/Calzabigi may not be the first in this regard.

Poster for My Fair Lady.

   In the Electra/Pygmalion course, disparate mythological strands will be united by the common fact that OGCMA-print lacks adequate depth. Electra deserves her own article and Pygmalion’s cinematic reception is not even remotely explored by JDReid et co. Pygmalion is one of the trickiest test-cases for my anally myopic theoretical rules on reception, especially because I doubt that most descendants of My Fair Lady know anything about the classical myth that lies before it. You know this about me. As for Electra, some fascinating receptions of Electra come into play cinematically — Il Pistolero dell’Ave Maria, or Electra, My Love, or the Jennifer Garner Elektra —among others. This course, the Clscs 490R/690R ought to find us looking into lots of films.

Let me know if I can clarify anything.

A New and Improved Athena on the Teatro San Carlo ceiling

OGCMA0249NOTAthena_Cammarano

A recent visit to Naples found me tracking a long-dead painter I never knew, Giuseppe Cammarano (1766-1850). Though not a great master from our perspective of 150 years, Cammarano was important during the Bourbon moment and influential as the “principal proponent” of Neapolitan neoclassicism.

The central frescoed ceiling of the famous Teatro San Carlo brought Cammarano to my attention. The huge round canvas hoovers high over the seats where artsy patrons have watched operas continuously since 1814. On my visits to this opera, I have been tucked away among the nose-bleed seats, too close to the ceiling to see it. San Carlo is the oldest continuously functioning operahouse anywhere, its musical majesty a critical reminder that Neapolitan culture is like the best stracciatella ricotta, extraordinary and rich.

G. Cammarano, "Apollo presents the Great Poets from Homer to Alfieri to Minerva", ceiling of
Teatro San Carlo, Naples.

Cammarano’s ceiling at the San Carlo presents a remarkable interpretation of the roles of Minerva and of Apollo. The artwork Apollo che presenta a Minerva i maggiori poeti, da Omero ad Alfieri (“Apollo presents to Minerva the greatest poets from Homer to Alfieri”, 1814) covers a whopping 500 square meters. Cammarano was commissioned to paint it as part of the restoration of the S.Carlo Theatre following a devastating fire. The commission was extended by Antonio Niccolini, who conceived the work. [NB: Cammarano's proscenium curtain was lost in an 1844 fire.****]

The novelty of this remarkable painting attracts your eye to its center then maintains your interest as you work your way outwards. A brilliant cloudburst emanates from her head, ruled shafts of light bursting from the divine central scene. Minerva occupies the middle position, sitting in glory atop the throne of heaven, presiding over the coronation of poets arriving in apotheosis. Nine Muses flank her, six to her left and three to her right. They clearly serve Minerva here, not Apollo musagetes. He stands apart from Minerva in posture every bit like the Apollo Belvedere, though he wears a regal robe tossed about his shoulders and plays a lyre. 

The central elements of this painting constitute a kind of Parnassus scene. Such scenes are common in neoclassicizing art.* Typically the Muses or their leader Apollo stands in a lofty place and receives a numerous string of artists who have achieved immortality.

Cammarano’s conception of the Parnassus scene works Athena into an uncustomarily superior role over her half-brother and subordinates Apollo to a gatekeeping role. 

Beyond Apollo, a gathering of poets awaits admission to the heavenly audience. In their rear (our far left), Hercules skips merrily with his newlywed bride, Hebe. Neither has any sense of urgency about getting to the painting’s center. A handful of robed men are ready to step upward toward the scene. Four particular artists attend the scene, identifiable as Homer, Vergil and Dante, (and is that Petrarch behind them all?). One surges forward, his time come, toward the accepting gesture of Apollo. It’s this poet’s coronation we are witnessing. He steps ahead of the all-time greatest to claim his prize over the heads of generations of opera-goers in the San Carlo.

The poet chosen for the immortalizing moment is Vittorio Alfieri. The Italian Romantic movement would have amounted to little, except for the contributions of Alfieri’s pen. Though Alfieri died at the fairly young age (1749 – 1803), his spirit captivated the hearts of Italians. His tragedies drew deeply from classical sources and played the central theme of liberty, the valorization of an individual transcending tyranny. Mdme Stendahl recorded in her journal a night in Napoli’s Teatro Nuovo when she emerged from a performance of Alfieri’s Saul thinking “that this tragedy touches the secret heartstrings of the Italian national spirit.”*** 

As Alfieri enters immortality, other figures on the massive canvas surge upward toward a heavenly reward. Is it Orpheus lower center who looks up at the woman who is being ushered away from him? He holds a lyre and the act of separation is distinctly portrayed. The throng of ghostly individuals is being led by a scythe-bearing Grim Reaper. Throughout the canvas, Cammarano has subtly adjusted the teleology from a classical setting to a heavenly scene in which a not a Judeo-Christian divinity presides but a classical goddess. The fitting ending for Alfieri in his quest for immortality.

G. Cammarano, Sala
del Consiglio, Caserta Reggia

Cammarano received the San Carlo commission two years after his first big Bourbon gig, when in 1814 he had collaborated with his brother, Antonio, to paint the Council Chamber of the Reggia at Caserta, depicting there “Minerva Crowning the Arts and Sciences” and, elsewhere in the same building the ceilings of the King’s bedroom with “Theseus Killing the Minotaur” and of the salon with “Hector Reprimanding Paris”. The Bourbon king Ferdinando IV had sent Cammarano to learn painting in Rome before any of the work at Caserta was undertaken. After San Carlo he would in service with Ferdinand as court decorator painting in the Palazzo Reale in Naples. His "Apollo with Muses" still adorns the ceiling of a reading room at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.  (Cioffi, p. 286 does not identify the room.)

G. Cammarano, "Hector Reprimanding
Paris", Caserta Reggia

G. Cammarano, "Theseus and the Minotaur", Caserta
Reggia, Getty Images

His latest work was the Last Supper in the apse at the cathedral in Caserta. In all these paintings Cammarano develops his own stylistic program of fundamentally overt neoclassical that is also aware of color-modes of late 18^th-century painting. The result of this is a distinct eclectic that comes also from peaceful refinement.” (Treccani; trans RTM) Cammarano's "Family Portrait of Francesco I King of the Two Sicilies" (1820, at Capodimonte), strikes me as extraordinarily ho-hum.

Better is Giuseppe Cammarano’s Apotheosis of Sappho (1831) on the ceiling of the monumental west staircase of Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano in the Via Toledo.

Apollo receives Sappho in apotheosis, G. Cammarano
Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Naples in situ

The apotheosis presents the same basic central scene as the San Carlo parnassus scene, but in a smaller format and as a fresco. A poetess holds her lyre and strives upward from left to center where Apollo receives her arrival at his cloud-strewn throne.

The Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano is primarily an art gallery now, with a few spectacular pieces of painted and sculpted art from all periods. The key holding is Caravaggio’s last canvas, “The Martyrdom of S.a Orsola.” It’s a painting with a history but catches your eye especially when you know that it contains the painter’s own self-portrait.

The Zevallos Caravaggio is safely tucked into its own room, which is a gem in its own right. The Wedgewood blue walls and ceiling of the room are decorated with white intaglios of erotic (though not overtly too naughty) scenes from classical mythology. I never stood inside a Wedgewood pyxis, until I entered this room. You should try it sometime. The wall opposite the painting has Mars and Venus ascending in a divine caress; the left wall shows Cupid and Psyche doing the same but with less petting; the right wall has Leda holding a very tame swan; but when I went to look behind the Caravaggio at the intaglio on the fourth wall, I triggered the alarm and left the room blushing, not from the naughtiness.  

————— RTM

Not in OGCMA, neither s.v. "Athena," s.v. "Apollo," nor s.v. "Parnassus".

* For Parnassus in literature: Classical sources: Ov. Met. 1.317, 2.221, 4.643, 5.278, 11.165, 11.330; Pausanias 10.6.1

** Treccani Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani vol. 17 (1974), s.v. “Cammarano, Giuseppe”:
“Nel frattempo aveva svolto un'intensa attività di decoratore per i Borbone: nel 1814, con la collaborazione del fratello Antonio, affrescò la volta della sala del Consiglio della reggia, di Caserta, raffigurandovi Minerva che premia le arti e le scienze e, nella stessa reggia, affrescò poi le volte della camera da letto del re (Teseo che uccide il Minotauro) e di un salotto (Ettore che rimprovera Paride, con data 1818). Nel 1816 intanto era stato chiamato dal Nicolini a decorare la volta del rinnovato teatro S. Carlo, con una vasta composizione su tela, ideata dallo stesso architetto e in cui figura Apollo che presenta a Minerva i maggiori poeti, da Omero ad Alfieri. Il C. lavorò quindi nel palazzo reale di Napoli e nel 1819 ne ornò un salone con un affresco raffigurante Minerva che premia le Virtù. In tutte queste decorazioni il C. sviluppa una sua formula stilistica di impronta fondamentalmente neoclassica e però sempre memore dei moduli coloristici tardosettecenteschi: risultandone così un certo eclettismo, comunque di piacevole raffinatezza.”

For more on Cammarano, see Greco, F.C. and R. Di Benedetto, edd. Donizetti, Napoli, l’Europa: Atti del Convegno (Napoli 11-13 dicembre 1997). Scientifiche Italiane, 2000. P. 282-83.

*** Diaries of Mdme Stendahl: 27 febbraio 1817. “Si direbbe che questa tragedia tocchi le corde segrete del sentimento nazionale italiano.]

**** Translation of a description of Cammarano's proscenium curtain, "il sipario": "...destroyed by a fire in 1844,... its attention to a theme represented and strongly promoted by the Bourbon agenda. A chronicler of the time, described its iconography precisely — You could see on the curtain Jupiter upon the height of Mt Olympus, whence came a ray of sunlight that fell upon the Genius of the Reign illuminating it. Upon this Genius was affixed the facial likeness of Ferdinando. Minerva guides to his proximity the various provinces of the realm personified and happy as they come together to pay tributary homage to the magnanimous Princeps through whom their inhabitants are just, humane, blessed, harmonious, agreeable, moderate, active, lovers of the public weal and they obtain today the affection, the esteem, and the admiration of all Europe and enjoy not disturbed internal peace because they are founded upon the true and lasting happiness of nations. ... Justice and Peace seem at the top to come forward to crown the August monarch whom they have recalled to this blessed land." Emanuele Taddei, Descrizione istorica dello incendio e del restauramento del Real Teatro di San Carlo (Napoli, 1817), 26 - 27 cited in R. Cioffi, "La Pittura di 'storia' a Napoli, all'epoca di Donizetti: persistenze neoclassiche a barlumi romantici," in R.C. Greco e R. Di Benedetto, edd., Donizetti Napoli l'Europa (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000), 283-85.