Abstract
M.A.
This dissertation considers how shifts in the representation of mythological figures, images and tales are reflective of shifts in social ideology. The texts with which this study is concerned have been chosen because of the ways in which they deal with mythological themes and images and their transference from one historical and ideological context to another. This transference is effected principally through the device of what Viktor Shklovsky called “defamiliarisation”.
In Neil Gaiman‟s American Gods, the fictional America of the novel is the framing context in which Gaiman considers the nature of mythology as it begins to shift from the ancient to the new. American Gods reveals how the natures of gods and the narrative patterns through which their exploits are told to men are altered as social idioms change. The battle between the gods of ancient mythologies and those of the new world is illustrative of a society undergoing ideological and religious change, especially in the conception of the godhead.
Although disparate in time, style and culture, the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf also engages with a mythological shift, from pagan to Christian mythological idiomatic thought. Beowulf, the great pagan warrior, and the creatures by which he finds himself confronted intermingle in complex ways to demonstrate the shift, not only in myth, but in the perception of its archetypal figures and their roles. In particular, it is the human element of mythology that is emphasised through the process of defamiliarisation.
To illustrate how a text‟s mythology can be adapted in order to be relevant to a temporally and ideologically distant society, this study will also examine the adaptation of the poem Beowulf into two filmic narratives. Beowulf 2007 and Beowulf and Grendel, are both concerned with the process of myth creation and dissemination and display an awareness of their own statuses as constructed narratives. In so doing, they draw attention to the constructed nature of mythology and its ideology. The films defamiliarise Beowulf and through the translation and adaptation of the poem are able to reinvent and thus revive the poetic material.