The God Beneath the Sea is a children's novel based on Greek mythology, written by Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen, illustrated by Charles Keeping, and published by Longman in 1970. That was awarded the annual Carnegie Medal (Garfield & Blishen) and was praised for the companion of the Greenaway Medal (Keeping) by the British Library Association. Pantheon Books published a US edition illustrated by Zevi Blum in 1971.
The novel begins with the newborn Hephaestus (the under-sea titular deity) thrown from Mount Olympus by his mother, Hera. He grew up in a cave by Thetis and Eurynome and two goddesses tell him the myths of Greek creation. The novel continues with myths about the Olympians and the age of gods and humans, and ends with Hephaestus returning to Olympus, who has been cast for a second time after denouncing Zeus.
Garfield, Blishen, Keeping, and Longman collaborated on a sequel titled The Golden Shadow (1973, ISBNÃ, 9780582151628). It is based on the mythical heroic myths later, when divine activity is limited.
Video The God Beneath the Sea
Plot
Underwater God is divided into three parts. The first part begins with a picture of a baby Hephaestus falling from Olympus to the ocean. Thetis keeps the baby and takes it to the cave he shared with Eurynome. They raise a baby, tell him stories of Greek myth and give him a hammer and a foundation to play with. The first part ends with Hermes inviting Hephaestus back to Olympus in Hera's will, and Hephaestus sues Aphrodite for his wife. Part two tells the myth of Prometheus and Pandora, and the third part tells the myths about the gods that interact with mortal beings. The novel ends with the Olympians failing to try to overthrow Zeus, and Hephaestus returns to Olympus from Lemnos, who has been demoted from Olympus for the second time after denouncing Zeus.
Part I
In Part I, "The Making of the Gods", Thetis and Eurynome tell the Hephaestus stories of the Titan and the Olympians, in hopes of extinguishing his restless nature. They start with the Titans myths that emerge from Chaos, then tell the birth of the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires, and the overthrow of Uranus by his son Cronus. They tell of the rise of Cronus to the throne with Queen Rhea, and the descent of her madness after Furies tortured her every night with a prophecy that she, like her father, would be overthrown by her son.
Hephaestus grows worse and harder with age. Thetis and Eurynome gave him a hammer, anvil and forge to vent his anger and find him a talented blacksmith. Hephaestus's most beautiful creation is a brooch depicting the nymph of the sea and her lover; he threatens to destroy the brooch unless Thetis tells him who he is and how he came to live in the cave. The goddesses continue their story: Rhea and Zeus conspire to overthrow Cronus. Cronus's avenger children defeat and imprison the Titans, wasting Rhea, Prometheus and Epimetheus.
The gods dress their house in Olympus, and Zeus tempts Hera by transforming himself into a cuckoo. Their child is horrible and unformed, and Hera throws the child into the sky. At the revelation of his descendants, Hephaestus broke the brooch, and half of it drifted into the sea. His desire for revenge was forged by the realization of Zeus's great power. The narrative then shifts from Hephaestus and the goddesses to telling concurrent events among the Olympians, including the arrival at Olympus of Apollo, Artemis, Athene and Hermes.
Pregnant again, Hera faces Zeus's infidelity, deciding to stay calm to avoid the other monsters. Hera gave birth to her second son, Ares, and the immortal came to Olympus in honor of the new-born god. Zeus tells Hermes to look for a gift for Ares. Hermes finds the missing piece of the broken Hephaestus brooch and returns it to Zeus as a present. Zeus created Aphrodite in the nymph image of the brooch. Hermes then reunite half a broken brooch with the other half, worn by Thetis.
Hera, startled by the beauty of the brooch, wanted to know who made the brooch, and sent Hermes to fetch Hephaestus. Hermes returns Hephaestus to Olympus; Hephaestus forgave Hera and asked Zeus for Aphrodite as a wife. Ares demanded birthright from Zeus, and Zeus made him a god of hatred, strife and war.
Part II
In Part II, "The Making of Man", Prometheus made man out of clay and the substance of Chaos to inhabit the earth, fearing that Zeus would give the earth to one of his children as a toy. By order of Zeus, Hermes commanded Prometheus to destroy his creation. Instead, Prometheus teaches His creatures to sacrifice and worship Zeus. Prometheus offers Zeus a two-part option as a sacrifice; Zeus mistakenly chose the poorer parts, and in retribution prohibits mankind from using fire. Prometheus steals fire for those who deviate from Zeus. He keeps a watch on humans, finding strange impurities in the Chaos substance he uses to create them. Here it is friction and hiding in a closed bottle.
Zeus ordered Hephaestus to make a woman. The Olympians blessed him with gifts, and Zeus named his Pandora. Hermes gave Pandora to Epimetheus as his wife. Zeus punishes Prometheus by buying him to the pole in the Caucasus, where the carnivorous birds eat his heart every day. At night the wounds healed, so that his sentence can begin again tomorrow morning.
Pandora finally found the hidden jar of Prometheus. Opening it, he releases fierce anger on mankind: madness, old age, vice and disease. All that's left in the jar is a cocoon that serves as a healing balm. Hermes entertains the despairing Prometheus that hope is abandoned to mankind, "because who knows what might be revealed from a cocoon?"
Part III
Part III, "God and Man", begins with the story of Lycaon transformed into a wolf by Zeus after treating him with disrespect. Zeus started a great flood. Prometheus shouted a warning to Deucalion, who made the ship to survive the storm with his wife, Pyrrha. They land on Mount Parnassus, and after praying they re-fill the ground by throwing rocks over their shoulders. The stones turn into humans when they land.
This novel later tells the Persephone kidnapping by Hades, and Demeter's search for him. After knowing the Persephone kidnapping from a shepherd, Demeter swears to Zeus that he will draw his blessing from the earth except Hades returns Persephone. Zeus agrees to let Persephone come back if he has not tasted the food of the dead. Ascalaphus, a gardener in the underworld, recalls that Pandora ate seven pomegranates in Hades, and Demeter transformed them into owls. Rhea interrupts and Demeter agrees to let Persephone live with Hades for three months in a year.
This novel tells the myth of Autolycus, son of Hermes and Chione, and Sisyphus. Autolycus steals her neighbor Sisyphus's cattle; Sisyphus took revenge by raping daughter of Autolycus, Anticleia. Autolycus sent Anticleia to Ithaca to marry Laertes, which caused Odysseus, son of Sisyphus and Anticleia, as his own. Sisyphus spies on Zeus exciting the daughter of the god of the river Asopus and tells Asopus where he has seen them in return for the giving of eternal spring. He toying with death by trapping Hades in his own bend. Hades is freed by Ares, but Sisyphus escapes to death a second time by tricking Persephone. Finally, Hermes brings Sisyphus to Tartarus, to be cursed to roll a large rock up the hill for good.
Meanwhile, Hera and Olympians conspire to imprison Zeus in the net while he is disturbed by lightning rains at Asopus. Thetis picks up Briareus to free him. Zeus punishes Hera by hanging him in the sky, and makes Poseidon and Apollo a futile task to build the cursed city of Troy. Hephaestus, looking at Hera's punishment, berating Zeus, and Zeus throwing Hephaestus a second time from Olympus. Hephaestus landed on the island of Lemnos and was cared for by local people. He returned to Olympus and was greeted by Hermes. At the conclusion of the novel, Autolycus muses in a letter to his daughter that her grandson Odysseus may one day visit the new town of Troy.
Maps The God Beneath the Sea
Development and theme
Blishen and Garfield began working on The God Beneath the Sea after discovering that Greek mythology had the same impact on them as elementary schoolchildren. In the words of Blishen, "these stories seem to illuminate, explain, what is going on around me in my small and insignificant life... They are about love... They are about the desire for power, about jealousy, about victory and great beat. " Garfield suggested that they should "write stories for children today" and remove the "Victorian upholstered qualities" of the stories as told to themselves.
The authors aim to restore the power that myths have for the Greeks, and for themselves as children. They decided to tell the myths not as separate stories but as "a fresh and original piece of fiction" and one continuous story of the origin of the world, human struggle against its environment, and human struggle with its own nature. They hope when writing a book to present these myths as "a total coherent record of the human situation, human difficulties, and human opportunities." One of the main difficulties they encountered was choosing the mythical sequence of the "great stretch" of Greek mythology to form a story that would increase the power of the work.
They share concerns about recent developments in children's literature and community attitudes toward children. They feel that the literature of older children has moved closer to adult literature, and that the book has taken them "farther than [they] were ever taken before" to achieve that goal. They feel the need to overcome the "meaningful violence" and "the strongest human desire" in this novel, because this is "the preoccupation with which our children, we know, are filled in at the moment."
Blishen and Garfield use four source text: E. V. Rieu's translation of Iliad and Odyssey , Metamorphoses, and Robert Graves' The Greek Myths . The main source text of the author is Graves' The Greek Myths , because of the simplicity of his writing. They also borrowed from Ovid and many music sources, including Handel.
About the writing process, the authors told Junior Bookshelf (August 1971), "We often write together.One of us will actually do the words to the paper.Often there is a long silence. , not with serious suggestions for further texts, but with wild laughter.Many things we face are the most gloomy and tense.Good laughter - and some school jokes - helps. "
Development of illustration
Charles Keeping drew fifteen illustrations for The God Beneath the Sea . His work is widely recognized by critics, but Keeping himself is not satisfied with his illustrations. He was not enthusiastic about working on books when approached by Garfield, because he did not like the Greek myth. The myths had been presented to him in school "in the most boring way" and as an art student he found Greek art "cold and impartially." He sees a common method of illustrating Greek myths in mimicking Greek vases as "boring holes".
After Garfield told the Keeping he used Robert Graves as the source, Keeping read The Greek Myths and found them "very disgusting" and "totally devoid of love" This is all lust, rape, revenge and violence. of every possible kind. "Continue searching for deeper meaning and philosophy in the stories, finding links to the Bible and other stories of other cultures and religions, and" some basic human desires. " In an attempt to "cover all the land [Garfield and Blishen] covered with fifteen pictures", Keeping felt he must "take a bunch of shapes that would project what this means to me."
Still deciding not to use a Greek costume because he worries the reader will react in the same way he used to: "What does it mean? What does it do? Am I just investigating the past?" He also avoids modern clothing because "it will be ancient in fifteen years," deciding in the end to discard "all recognizable costumes" while avoiding "anything that is related to our special moment in time." He uses "figurative art, nothing else in it... except people, their emotions and their reactions to emotions."
Continue to call the complete illustration for The God Beneath the Sea "a set of images that really makes me sick and not all is well." He sees them as cruel and cruel illustrations of cruel and cruel people, and tries to project them visually by taking "symbolic lines, so if you look at them you will find a symbolic tone in them." At the time of the publication of the book, Keeping is looking forward to working with the author on the Golden Shadow sequel, as he hopes "to make up for some mistakes from the first."
Meaning and acceptance of Literature
The Library Association acknowledged God Beneath The Sea for his two yearbook children's awards, Carnegie Medal and Medal Kate Greenaway. Garfield and Blishen won the Carnegie Medal, for the best children's book of the year by the English subject. Keeping is a commendable runner up for the Greenaway Medal companion, a retirement difference after 2002.
Write
It is considered a controversial book at the time of publication, with critical opinions divided on its merits. The reaction is mainly divided into novel prose styles; John Rowe Townsend observes that "The authors ask English prose to do something that has never been comfortable since the seventeenth century, and many reviewers think that Garfield-Blishen's high-end effort ends like Icarus." Robert Nye feels the authors have "fallen into the trap of making things impossible [...] to lose much of the important ins and outs." Alan Garner in New Statesman criticized the prose of this novel as "excessive Victoriana, 'delicate' writing at its worst, cliche - carried to the point of satire, false poetry, groaning with images and, among other things that chaos grandiose, sometimes annoying everyday. "Rosemary Manning writes in the Times Literary Supplement that his writings are" fertile, meandering and indulgent, "and" filled with... words lazy... and burdened with difficult words. "
Positive reviewers see the writing style of the book as reviving the Greek myth for modern readers. History Today praised the poetic writing and the "terror and the mystery of the universe" of the book. A review on The Spectator calls it "a wonderful book" that "should evoke a response from anyone clogged up in the classic, want to see the poem again." Ted Hughes reviews this book positively, noting the author's attempt to "break the Victoria casts" from "dull moralization... concentrated on the Ancient Greeks". For Hughes, the novel makes the myth "obviously new"; the authors "stripped off the pseudo-classical curtains and produced an intense, highly colorful primitive atmosphere." The Classical Journal declares the main strength of the novel is "liveliness and strength, both style and action."
The narrative structure of the novel is chosen by reviewers with similarly divided verdicts. For Manning, the novel's opening, "a wonderful device... to allow the book to begin dramatically", and the moments of subsequent speed and tension, are destroyed by chronic excessive writing. Nye felt the use of two falling Hephaestus as a framing device "interpreting what is in between", but for Nye "it is a kind of barbaric taste, depending on most melodrama". History Today claimed the option of retelling myth as an ongoing narrative resulted in a "brilliant poetic fantasy"; Hughes says the novel series of stories, "[t] heir zest sweeps you in. This is a real achievement, to make it all sound so straightforward." The Contemporary Review observes "a bit of narrative setback" in the second half of this book, after a subtle "reworking of the previous myth" but perceives it "less than the dramatic effectiveness and narrative motive... that helps bringing together different myths very well. " The Spectator claims" the narrative is handled dramatically, and the comic, the awareness of epic shipping into our creative origins. "
Philip Pullman quotes The God Beneath the Sea as an inspiration for his fantasy literature. A 2001 article in The Guardian The God Beneath the Sea the ninth best book of all time, calls it "[v] isceral, powerful, defiantly undomesticated" and "rendering best of Greek myths in modern English. "
Illustration
In contrast to the mixed acceptance of the writing, the critics unanimously acknowledged the power of Charles Keeping's illustrations. In a scathing comment, Garner calls them "a single vision of what a Classical myth should be, two especially - Cronos and Prometheus - more terrible and beautiful than Goya." Manning states that "Keeping contributions are remarkable... From this book, it is Keeping's interpretation of the 'enormous violent energy' of the Greek myth that will be remembered." The Spectator calls the illustration "totems of potency"; The Contemporary Review says "bold, powerful and imaginative illustrations" are added to "dramatic presentations of myth." Hughes sees his illustration as "linking stories with primitive mythic roots, not to civilized commentators, taking stories from scholarships and handing them back to the imagination." Writing on the occasion of the nomination of Keeping for the 1974 Hans Christian Andersen Award, a reviewer at The Times selected the illustrations for The God Beneath the Sea and its sequel
Random House Publishers in the US replaced the Keeping job with illustrations by Zevi Blum. They are not well received by critics; one of which describes them as "MGM style images, which replaced the drama with gentle shyness and prurience."
See also
Note
References
- Quote
- Blishen, Edward; Garfield, Leon; Keeping, Charles (November 1970). "Greek myth and readers of the twentieth century". Children's Literature in Education . 1 (3): 48-65. doi: 10.1007/bf01213617. ISSNÃ, 1573-1693
- Blishen, Edward; Garfield, Leon (October 26, 1970). Underwater God . Illustrated by Charles Keeping. London: Longman. ISBNÃ, 0-582-15093-0 Ã,
External links
- The Underwater God in the library (WorldCat catalog) - soon, first US edition
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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