![]() ![]() Language has evolved to consider everything from the uniqueness of the feminine experience to what it means to be female anatomically. And while feminist revisionist literature has tackled the issue, it’s never been more important – in a post-#MeToo world – to imagine new characters and rethink existing ones. “Words, our primary agent of expression,” Christine C Keating points out in her essay, Unearthing the Goddess Within: “signify a discourse that has been established by a patriarchic myth.” We were given these characters, with their beauty and flaws, by men. Take for example the figures of Eve, Madonna, Helen, and Penelope – all embodiments of women invented by men. While myths are being made new, they grow to represent both the worlds they were set in and today. The ancient ‘viral memes’ still with us ![]() Myths are the most fulfilling form of storytelling: they serve to document events explain the unexplainable to operate as manuals for morality. It was the hearth where ancient humans gathered to keep warm, and as they did they talked, sang and laughed. ![]() “We do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise,” Stephen Fry writes in Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold. Just as my sister and I huddled together as children while our mother read to us each night, so too did our forebears. Storytelling is an innately human quality one that crosses cultures and languages. ![]()
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