The bad boy of Athens : from the Greeks to Game of Thrones
Mendelsohn, Daniel, 1960-2019
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Click and Collect for The bad boy of Athens : from the Greeks to Game of ThronesOver the past three decades, Daniel Mendelsohn's essays and reviews have earned him a reputation as ̀our most irresistible literary critic' (New York Times). This striking new collection exemplifies the way in which Mendelsohn - a classicist by training - uses the classics as a lens to think about urgent contemporary debates. There is much to surprise here. Mendelsohn invokes the automatons featured in Homer's epics to help explain the AI films Ex Machina and Her, and perceives how Ted Hughes sought redemption by translating a play of Euripides (the ̀bad boy of Athens') about a wayward husband whose wife returns from the dead. There are essays on Sappho's sexuality and the feminism of Game of Thrones; on how Virgil's Aeneid prefigures post-World War II history and why we are still obsessed with the Titanic; on Patrick Leigh Fermor's final journey, Karl Ove Knausgaard's autofiction and the plays of Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams, and Noel Coward. The collection ends with a poignant account of the author's boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, which inspired his ambition to become a writer. In The Bad Boy of Athens, Mendelsohn provokes and dazzles with erudition, emotion and tart wit while his essays dance across eras, cultures and genres. This is a provocative collection which sees today's master of popular criticism using the ancient past to reach into the very heart of modern culture.
Main title:
The bad boy of Athens : from the Greeks to Game of Thrones / Daniel Mendelsohn.
Author:
Imprint:
London : William Collins, 2019.
Collation:
368 pages ; 25 cm.
Contents:
Machine generated contents note: The Robots Are Winning! -- Homer, Ex Machina, and Her -- Girl, Interrupted -- How gay was Sappho? -- Not an Ideal Husband -- Ted Hughes' Alcestis and the ghost of Sylvia Plath -- The Bad Boy of Athens -- Fiona Shaw updates Medea -- Alexander, the Movie! -- The problem with `accuracy in a blockbuster biopic -- The Strange Music of Horace -- Translating Rome's most difficult poet -- Epic Fail? -- Reading the Aeneid in the twenty-first century -- The Women and the Thrones -- George R. R. Martin's feminist epic on TV -- Unsinkable -- Why we can't let go of the Titanic -- Not Afraid of Virginia Woolf -- The Hours on the big screen -- White or Grey? -- The ambiguities of A Streetcar Named Desire -- The Two Oscar Wildes -- Wit or camp in The Importance of Being Earnest? -- The Tale of Two Housmans -- Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love -- Bitter-Sweet -- The secret heart of Private Lives -- The Collector -- Reading Susan Sontag's diaries --Contents note continued: The End of the Road -- Patrick Leigh Fermor's final journey -- I, Knausgaard -- Pact, fiction, and the Fuhrer -- A Lot of Pain -- Hanya Yanagihara and the aesthetics of victimhood -- The American Boy -- A young writer, Mary Renault, and a life-changing correspondence.
ISBN:
9780007545155
Dewey class:
801.95818.609
Language:
English
Added title:
Subject:
BRN:
362924
More Information:
| Location | Collection | Call number | Status/Desc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brighton Library | Adult Non Fiction - Languages and Literature | 801.95 MEN | Available |
Find it!
Total copies: 1
Available: 1
Click and Collect for The bad boy of Athens : from the Greeks to Game of Thrones