Research Catalog

Title

The bad boy of Athens : from the Greeks to Game of Thrones / Daniel Mendelsohn.

Author

Mendelsohn, Daniel Adam, 1960-

Publication

London : William Collins, 2019.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

368 pages; 25 cm

Summary

Over the past three decades, Daniel Mendelsohn's essays and reviews have earned him a reputation as òur 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 b̀ad 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.

Subjects

• Civilization
• Classical literature > Influence
• Mendelsohn, Daniel Adam, 1960-
• Civilization, Ancient, in popular culture
• Civilization, Western > Classical influences
• Civilization, Classical > Influence
• Critics > United States > Biography
• Literature, Modern > Classical influences
• Film critics > United States > Biography

Contents

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 -- The end of the road: Patrick Leigh Fermor's final journey -- I Knausgaard: Fact, 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.

Call Number

JFE 19-9365

ISBN

• 9780007545155
• 0007545150

OCLC

1103999377

Author

Mendelsohn, Daniel Adam, 1960- author.

Title

The bad boy of Athens : from the Greeks to Game of Thrones / Daniel Mendelsohn.

Publisher

London : William Collins, 2019.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Research Call Number

JFE 19-9365