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elsie
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« on: April 10, 2011, 07:05:49 PM » |
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I've been groping around for a theme for an honors composition class in the fall, and I've finally hit on the idea of looking at contemporary texts that look back to specific classic texts. For instance, I'm looking at The Sherlockian based on the classic Sherlock Holmes stories and The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason. I'd like to have three or four pairs that students could choose among. Can the great fora think of any other likely classic/contemporary pairs?
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"People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff." - the Doctor
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spectacle
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« Reply #1 on: April 10, 2011, 07:24:48 PM » |
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I love this idea - the thread title immediately made me think of Jane Eyre/Wide Sargasso Sea, as well as Beowulf/Grendel.
Didn't Angela Carter do a bunch of re-worked classical fairy tales? (runs off to looks, since this is way more fun than grading)
Update: Yes - the collection is called The Bloody Chamber.
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« Last Edit: April 10, 2011, 07:26:44 PM by smithfieldmuse »
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I think this thread is going well. Don't you think this thread is going well?
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glowdart
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« Reply #2 on: April 10, 2011, 07:46:42 PM » |
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The Odyssey and Cold Mountain
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elsie
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« Reply #3 on: April 10, 2011, 08:35:08 PM » |
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The Odyssey and Cold Mountain
I like this idea, but I'm concerned about the easily googled essays that compare the two. Of course, that's always a risk with literary assignments. |
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"People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff." - the Doctor
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dr_alcott
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« Reply #4 on: April 10, 2011, 09:14:51 PM » |
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The Great Gatsby and Ernesto Quinonez's Bodega Dreams. The latter is set in the late 90s in Spanish Harlem, and the Gatsby figure is a drug dealer who uses his money to better the community. I taught the two together about ten years ago; the students loved it. The Odyssey and Cold Mountain
There's also The Odyssey and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.
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I am an insanely elegant, super classy poor white, for the record.
I love everyone here!
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peppergal
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« Reply #5 on: April 10, 2011, 09:18:43 PM » |
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Tom Holt Expecting Someone Taller and The Niebelungenlied. Actually, since Holt takes a lot of the material from Wagner's reinterpretation of the medieval epic, you could work in three that way.
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series takes a lot from a number of different classics (Hamlet, Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, and Great Expectations, just to name a few.
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yellowtractor
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« Reply #6 on: April 11, 2011, 08:06:28 AM » |
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If you're open to YA, there's always Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and Milton's Paradise Lost. But (a) that's a trilogy and (b) do you mean Greco-Roman classics?
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i think is good for every one only the think is that we will always scares about that. |
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elsie
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« Reply #7 on: April 11, 2011, 08:26:28 AM » |
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I'm more thinking about novels that revisit the classics, where the classic characters are reframed and re-envisioned.
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"People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff." - the Doctor
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yellowtractor
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« Reply #8 on: April 11, 2011, 08:32:05 AM » |
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I'm more thinking about novels that revisit the classics, where the classic characters are reframed and re-envisioned.
You mean the Greco-Roman classics, then. Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red for Hercules and Geryon. |
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i think is good for every one only the think is that we will always scares about that. |
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elsie
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« Reply #9 on: April 11, 2011, 08:35:49 AM » |
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Not necessarily Greco-Roman. I'm looking at including The Sherlockian as well.
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"People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff." - the Doctor
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yellowtractor
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« Reply #10 on: April 11, 2011, 08:49:24 AM » |
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Well, then you're open to different people's ideas about what constitutes a "classic."
I'd still push Anne Carson. Another possibility: Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which riffs on the Biblical New Testament (Pontius Pilate in particular) and Faust, in the context of 1930s Soviet Russia. It also has a giant talking cat in it.
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« Last Edit: April 11, 2011, 08:51:07 AM by yellowtractor »
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i think is good for every one only the think is that we will always scares about that. |
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dr_alcott
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« Reply #11 on: April 11, 2011, 09:09:57 AM » |
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Two recent novels that take another look at American classics through the eyes of a peripheral character:
Finn by Jon Clinch apparently reimagines Huck Finn through the eyes of his pap. Haven't read this one.
March by Geraldine Brooks tells the story of Mr. March, the father in Little Women.
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I am an insanely elegant, super classy poor white, for the record.
I love everyone here!
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conjugate
Compulsive punster and insatiable reader, and
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« Reply #12 on: April 11, 2011, 10:22:27 AM » |
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I just realized that many of the things I was going to point you towards are out of print; Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy novels are often fantasy-based pastiches of classic murder mysteries (if Sherlock Holmes counts, then surely Agatha Christie counts as well, right?) but those are harder to find now. But Ten Little Wizards or Too Many Magicians would both work for this. Now, Percy Jackson is the hero of a number of teen/adolescent novels based on Greek myth; this might work for you. Then, of course, L. Sprague DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt did a nice series of stories based on various classic works, but those are even harder to find than the Garrett stuff. For the jackpot, John Myers Myers's Silverlock is based on everything. It's an astonishing thing, and almost any work you care to name is part of the basis of the novel. Hope these help; the ones that are out of print might be puttable-on-reserve in the library, or available via Kindle or other source. |
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Unfortunately, I think conjugate gives good advice.
∀ε>0∃δ>0∋|x–a|<δ⇒|ƒ(x)-ƒ(a)|<ε |
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catherder
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« Reply #13 on: April 11, 2011, 10:53:01 AM » |
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Mary Renault's The King Must Die reframes the Theseus story.
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fleabite
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« Reply #14 on: April 11, 2011, 10:55:42 AM » |
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