No. 111/2020

From Zeus to the Argonauts: In times past, children and young peo- ple learned about ancient gods and heroes from books; today, they watch the battle of Troy on screen. Together with an international research team, the Polish classical scholar, Katarzyna Marciniak, studies how antique stories are adapted and received today. The epics of ancient Greece and Rome have long since ceased to be an exclusively European cultural heritage. Take the New Zealand art- ist, Marian Maguire, who associates the figure of Hercules with Maori traditions in her work. And global popular culture is also steeped in antique myths. In “Beauty and the Beast”, for example, we encounter the story of Eros and Psyche. It emerges that the narrative patterns of the myth contain univer- sal themes, such as the search for love and inner values in “Beauty and the Beast”. The sagas of gods and heroes capture archetypes of human feeling and action and thus furnish adolescents, in particular, with identity, meaning and orientation. “Every new adaptation rekindles the ancient world in our cultural memory; it is universal and embeds us in a local context. The figures and narratives form a communicative code which crosses national and generational borders. Anyone who has learnt to read it has access to the mythical community that is built on the values of humanism,” says Katarzyna Marciniak. Text MAREIKE ILSEMANN The former Humboldt Research Fellow and Humboldt Alumni Award Winner, PROFESSOR DR KATARZYNA MARCINIAK , heads the international research project “Our Mythical Childhood” at the University of Warsaw, Poland. She is the Humboldt Foundation’s Ambassador Scientist in Poland. Photo: Humboldt Foundation/Nikolaus Brade BRIEF ENQUIRIES HOW DO NEPTUNE, HERCULES AND CO. STILL INFLUENCE CHILDREN AROUND TH WORLD TODAY, MS MARCINIAK? E 10 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 111/2020